Top 5 Productivity Mistakes

Man, we love to talk about productivity. What's the newest app? What's the newest technology you're using? How do I manage my email? What should I do about delegating? Oh, my God. I need a virtual assistant. On and on and on. But if we're honest with ourselves, how many of these things have actually positively influenced our lives in the last year, the last two years, in the last five years? Or do we constantly search for the latest app, the latest tactic, the latest tool, without ever analyzing what our fundamental challenges are with productivity? I'll give you an example from my own life. I had one thing I had to do on a Saturday afternoon. 1. It was to empty out, like two boxes that were in my bedroom. I was sitting in my bed. I woke up Saturday around 9am sitting there playing on the computer. And those boxes sat there the entire day. I sat in bed. I had food delivered to me. I did nothing. But it wasn't about time. I had all the time in the world. I had nothing to do that day. But for whatever reason, I sat there eyeing those boxes. I know I should be emptying you, but I didn't do it at all. It wasn't about time. There was something much deeper going on. I think we've all experienced that. The idea that I know I should be doing something, I even have time carved out for it, and yet I'm not doing it. Why is that? Today I want to talk about five mistakes that we make with productivity. Five things that if we recognize them, internalize them, fix them, we can live a much more productive and richer life. Mistake number one, trying to do it all ourselves. How many of us have a to do list that's 20 items long? 30, 50. And if you actually looked at them, what is the relative importance of them? One might be, you know, figure out how to start investing. And the other one might be empty the dishwasher. Okay, those are not the same importance level. Which one is going to change your life and which one kind of just needs to get done? Well, when we rank them all at the same level, we're only setting ourselves up for failure because we feel guilty. Of course I can't do 49 to do items today, but really, I shouldn't have to. When we try to do everything ourselves, that's mistake number one of productivity. The top performers, I know the ones who get more done than almost anyone else in the same 24 hours, they're very clear about where their time deserves to be spent and what they should not be doing. Now, as you earn More and more. Of course, you can trade money for time. So, for example, if you say, you know what, doing my laundry isn't really a good use of my time. I'm going to hire someone to come pick up my laundry and do it for you. Does that sound super extravagant? Maybe. You know what? A few years ago it would have sounded very extravagant to me. But as I increased my earnings and I focused on what I wanted to do, I realized, you know, the best use of my time, perhaps is not to be cooking food or to be ironing my clothes, even though I love ironing. Okay, Because I'm a weirdo. So what is one thing you can do, one thing that you can outsource Today? Tim Ferriss talks about this famously in the four Hour Workweek. Eben Pagan talks about this when he says, each week, pick one thing you could do to save one hour a week. Could be your laundry. Could be grocery shopping, could be cleaning your apartment, whatever it may be. But I'm going to ask you today for mistake number one. What is one thing you could do that you could outsource? One thing. Mistake number two, thinking that we are rational robots that can check, check, check all of our to do's off without ever taking into account how we are cognitive misers and our energy levels. Think about this for a second. How many of us wake up in the morning, say, oh my God, I have all these things to do. I'm going to write all these things down. And then around 3 or 4pm we're kind of like, ah, I'll do that tomorrow. Why? Because we are cognitive misers. That means we have limited cognition, limited willpower. That's why I always make fun of people who want to save $2 or $3 on lattes, as if that $3 decision is worth the diminished cognition you have. $3 a day. Really don't save that much Anyway, I'd rather have you focus your limited cognition willpower on the big wins. The things that matter. Starting to invest early, negotiating your salary for finding a dream job, earning more, traveling, calling family. These things matter more. I'd rather use my limited willpower for those things instead of a $3 latte, which isn't even going to save me that much anyway. Plus, it'll make me miserable to not have it. So when it comes to this mistake, what we tend to believe is, oh, I could just write these things and I'll do it later. Never taking into account how each additional thing we add to our list makes it less likely we'll do Anything at all. That is the paradox of choice. And that's why the solution for this mistake, this mistake of ignoring our psychology, is to pick one less thing to focus on per week. Just one. What is one thing? Where you look at your calendar for the last month or two and it's been on your calendar, it's been on your to do list and you just have not gotten around to it. Maybe it's reading that book, maybe it's unpacking that box. Whatever it may be, I want you to pick one thing that you were going to eliminate from your list. Could mean just saying, you know what? I'm not going to read this book. I'm going to be totally honest. I should. But I'm not doing it and it's not going to happen. Give it away. If it's a box of something you need to unpack, either unpack it or acknowledge you're not going to do it. Throw it away. One thing this week, that's it. One thing that you are going to eliminate from your to do list from your calendar and not feel guilty about it anymore. Mistake number three, feeling that you have to be productive all the time. This is a huge mistake and assumption that people make about productivity. They think, oh, wait a minute, Ramit, you're telling me that I have to be productive all the time so I have to schedule everything in 15 minute increments. What about fun? What about spontaneity? Well, actually, I'm a huge believer in fun and spontaneity. Now, I may say something a little counterintuitive. A lot of type A people I know find it very difficult to let loose, right? They have their phone with them everywhere they go, they don't know how to turn things off. And actually, for that matter, that's kind of like me, right? My work and life blend together. I will also tell you that I'm very, very particular about my rest time. So for example, on a Saturday, I'm really comfortable sitting in bed for many hours, watching movies, eating whatever and just recuperating. Right? In fact, in my business, I often take a two or three week vacation because I know I need to recuperate. And it's part of the mental side of productivity. Now, we've all been in a situation where we had time carved out to do something, like we're supposed to write or we're supposed to call somebody. We just can't bring ourselves to do it. Why? Is it simply about time? No. We all know that time in and of itself is not the only Thing we need to be productive. The other thing we forget is energy. I'm not talking metaphysical weirdo woo woo energy. I'm talking simply about the difference between when you wake up and you're very, very conscious, you're full of energy versus, you know, at the end of the day or after a huge meal, how do you feel? There's a great book on this from Olympic trainers. It's called the Power of Full Engagement. It talks about sprints, it talks about recuperation, the importance of pacing yourself. And so for this mistake, the mistake of needing to feel busy all the time, if you are a type A person who finds it very difficult to just sit and kind of take a walk or just watch some TV and relax, I would say it sounds weird, but try scheduling relaxation into your calendar. I know that's counterintuitive, but for many type A people, they actually need it. They need a block that says, you know what, two hours guilt free do nothing time. Kind of sounds familiar to my guilt free spending from the personal finance book that I wrote. Well, all of us need guilt free recuperation time. And if you have to schedule that in order to make it happen, so be it. I don't care what you use to get that time, but it is absolutely imperative that you do so. The antidote to this mistake, the mistake of needing to always feel guilty, is look at your calendar, schedule it if you have to. I don't care if you think it's weird or not. Make sure that you get that time to mentally recover. Because as the book the Power of Full Engagement talks about, it is absolutely critical to top performers to not just have time, but also to have the mental energy to to be at the top of their game. Mistake number four, productivity porn. This is our belief that we need to find the latest app, trick, hack tool and that finally will really make us productive. And I think we all know if we acknowledge the truth that that really doesn't work, we can find the most amazing app. But does that really change our underlying challenges? Being distracted, not having priorities, not knowing what to start first and what to do last. In fact, just to give you an example, if you were to bring Andre Agassi here and we were to play tennis, he has this dusty old wooden racket and I have the most high tech racket you can get, he would kick my ass. Because the tools matter, but they don't matter as much as we think. The fundamentals matter so much more. Go ask an Olympic weightlifter, how do you do what you do you think he's going to say, make sure you wear these brand name Nomex gloves? No, he's going to talk about discipline, he's going to talk about mindset, he's going to talk about diet, he's going to talk about all these things. And here we have these dilettantes and novices focusing on apps and hacks and tools. Why? Because it's easy. It gives us a sense that if I wear his shoes, if I use the same notepad he uses, I can do what he does. So this week my challenge to you is eliminate all of your productivity tools. Just stop using them, put them away, hide them in a different folder, put them in a different screen of your phone and go back to the fundamentals. That may mean a notepad. Look at this. A simple notepad. It may mean a pen and paper, it may mean whatever, but instead of using all these fancy tools just for one week, just for seven days, say, you know what, going to try to do everything on the simplest tool available, pen and paper. I'll just give you an example. I wrote most of my book by hand. It was freeing because it freed me from all distractions, playing around, googling all these things. Instead, I just had one thing I could do and one thing only, and that was write. So for seven days, my challenge to you is eliminate all your apps, all your tools, all your hacks, go back to the simplest thing, just seven days, and see how much more productive you can be. Mistake number five, deluding ourselves into thinking we're being productive when we're actually just being busy. How many of us have gotten into work, started answering emails, five hours go by, we look at, say, wait a minute, what did I do all day? All I've been doing is sending emails, then responding to the responses and then responding to those responses. I didn't really even get anything done today. This is a chronic problem in a world of information overload. So my challenge to you here is be brutally honest with yourselves. It's really easy in the day to day, in the moment to say, oh, I was really busy today, I got all this stuff done. But if you're brutally honest with yourself on a Friday morning or Friday afternoon, you look and say, what did I say I was going to get done this Monday? What did I actually get done? This is where we tend to lie to ourselves. Well, I was gonna get X done, but then the boss didn't respond and then this person didn't do that. No, it's our responsibility. We own it. So every Monday, one Thing I like to do is say, what are the three things I want to get done this week? Just three. If I just get these three things done, I'll be happy. And then on Friday, I like to just be really critical and say, you know, what did I get done? And if not, if I didn't get something done, why? A lot of times I find that I didn't break the problem down. So I'll say something like, oh, I want to write this amazing e book by Friday. Ridiculous. But I look back on Friday, I say, why didn't I get it done? Oh, because I didn't have an idea first. I didn't have a table of contents. I didn't have all these testimonials I needed from people. I didn't break the problem down. So each week I get better and better at estimating these things. So, for example, a month from now, I. I wouldn't say I want to write a whole e book by Friday. I would say, you know what? I want to have the table of contents fleshed out by Friday. And it's okay to not get everything done by Friday, but it is imperative that we learn how to better estimate how long something takes. So for this week, what I would say is Monday, set a goal of what it is you want to accomplish by the end of the week. Just three things, really simple. And by the end of the week, I want you to be brutally honest with yourself. What did you accomplish if you didn't accomplish something, why? And if you did, what are you going to do next week? Perhaps you can set just a slightly larger goal going forward. And that is mistake number five. Not giving ourselves honest assessments of our work and our results. And as you know, the antidote set three things you want to do on Monday and be brutally honest by Friday. Okay? In this video, we've talked about the five critical mistakes that we make when it comes to productivity. So I figured I'd do something a little fun. For me, one of the things that I wanted to be more productive at, more effective at, was actually going to the gym. I used to go to the gym all the time. I'd work out for six months. I wouldn't gain a pound. I was a skinny dude. I was trying to gain weight, and I really didn't know what I was doing right. I had no mental strength. I didn't even know the basic tactics of, oh, on this day, you know, you do back, and on this day, you do biceps, whatever. So over time, I learned how this stuff worked. I worked out with a friend. And then I actually ended up getting a trainer. And that really changed everything for me. I actually learned the fundamentals of how health work, how diet interacts with working out and all those things. And so I wanted to do something special for you. I wanted to give one of you a personal trainer for a year. That's a $5,000 value, and it's my pleasure to be able to do that for one of you. Here. Here's what you have to do in order to be eligible. Okay? What you need to do is, well, you've watched this video. You're obviously watching it to the end. So what am I going to say about that? You need to take one of the mistakes that I've talked about today, and I want you, in a comment below here, I want you to tell me exactly what you're going to do to apply that lesson to your life. Now, you will have to join the email list to be eligible to win, and I will announce the winner of this $5,000 personal trainer giveaway in an upcoming email. So again, to win that personal trainer for a year, go through this video, find out one lesson you've learned. Tell me in explicit detail how you're going to apply it to your own life, and I will let you know in an upcoming email which of you has won a personal trainer for a year. Thanks for watching.