10 Best Bang For Buck Tips To Being Hyper Productive
For the 2 weeks I have been rigorously studying time management tips and putting them to work to great success. I want to outline the best tips that I have found. But first 2 things:
1) Successful people not only believe "TIME IS MONEY", but they know "how much" time is worth in dollars, and how much money is worth in hours and they manage it well. The key thing in determining what is most productive is looking for the return on investment whether that be time or money. If you know you are worth $10 an hour, you should spend up to $10 to save you 1 hour if you have the money and focus on the highest payoff task first (provided you can actually convert that saved time directly into earnings). You can also resolve to convert time to money, or invest in something that saves you money. The other key is managing what you have. You can't just continue to spend money on saving time if you do not have the money to do so. You need to create excess of both so you can invest your time into projects that boost your earnings, and invest your money into tasks that will save you time.
2) If you don't have a habit of reading information and listening to audio books (and watching videos) to boost your knowledge... start. The reinvestment in yourself, your knowledge, etc can create a huge impact provided you are able to convert the skills, lessons, and boosted production/earnings into action at some point.
Now I will get to the 10 Best Bang For Buck Tips To Being Hyper Productive as promised in the title
1)Practice Targeted Reading - I also call this "reading with a purpose". Start with a goal of the information you want, actively scan through table of contents on books of the topic. Pick the most interesting, relevant chapters and only read the most relevant chapters, or subsections of each chapter. This will cut down your workload and allow you to get the most relevant, useful information per minute. I estimate that you can cut the reading workload from a 75,000 book down to 7,500 or less.
Given a 2 hour per day reading habit 730hours -73hours = 657 hours of savings. ROI = 657/2=328.50-1 =
32,750% ROI! That may be conservative if you consider that you not only can reduce the workload of books but also eliminate the need for reading books before you even start.
2) Speed Reading - Speed reading provides a great ROI. It may take a few hours to learn but if you read enough it will quickly pay off. Tim Ferris has a great article on how to boost reading by 300%. I think although reading comprehension tends to go down as WPM goes up, one with a habit of reading 2 hours a day could still realistically save 300 hours a year with just 2 hours investment of time specifically on developing this skill. ROI 15,000%
3) Double Audio Learning Speed - I don't know if it is appropriate to link to one of my articles, but using windows media player you can increase the speed of mp3 players to up to 8 times which allegedly is in the subconscious learning range. Unfortunately you probably won't be able to consciously comprehend much beyond the range of 2 - 4 times the speed even with practice. You can do this using other mp3 players as well and then mix them down to an mp3 and take it on the road with you. Since audio is typically listened to when you aren't free to read and are doing something else (driving, cooking, etc) This doubles the info in a year rather than doubles the time. As such the ROI is difficult to determine, but subjectively I'd say you get 500 hours of value with 12 hours of work preparing and maintaining the mp3 player and the mp3s themselves. estimated ROI 4066.67%
4) Double Video Learning - Again, I don't know if it is appropriate to link to one of my articles go to youtube.com/HTML7 and if you have a computer and browser that allows, turn the HTML 7 on and you can put videos at 2x the speed after loading the video and clicking on the setting. 90,000 ROI with 150 hours of listening a year since it takes just minutes to double the speed but lower net hourly savings per year.
5) Optimize Sleep - How much time do you toss and turn before bed or lay in bed while the alarm clock blares? Steve Pavlina and Tim Ferris both have lots of great material on improving the quality of sleep as well as the time it takes to get to sleep, and get out of bed, and even uberman polyphasic sleep schedules to sleep 4 hours a day. If you normally can spend 30 less minutes in bed awake by spending a couple hours reading articles and training yourself that will results in about 9000% ROI and add 182.5 productive hours a year.
6)Eliminate Distraction - Steve Pavlina claims he was able to nearly triple his productivity simply by keeping a time journal and eliminating the "non-working tasks" and finding ways to get more value out of working so that his productive hours went up nearly 3 times. This could be the most useful tip of all as if you are able to triple productivity that could add around 1000 productive hours a year while only investing say 4 hours resulting in a 25,900% ROI and directly converting that time saved to valuable working hours.
7)Brian Tracy claims that planning in advance results in 10 minutes of productivity for every 1 minute you spend or a 900% ROI (he says 1000% but that is a common mistake of inaccurate math since the 1 is the cost so you have to subtract it to find the net return. I.E. Doubling your income would earn 2x as much but be a 100% increase, not 200%).
8)Mobile University - Another thing Brian Tracy talks about is creating a "mobile university". The average person spends 2 hours a day in a car. If you start listening to audiotapes while driving you can get 2 hours of use when you normally are doing nothing. The investment converts 2*365 or 730 unused hours to productive times but since that time saved can never be converted into "working time" as a result, the actual ROI depends on the degree by which it boosts your earnings power. If 730 hours of audio doubles your earning power and costs a few hundred a year in audiobooks or a few hours of your time, then you can calculate ROI. But this is too speculative and as such it is more difficult to put a number on this, and if I did, I would have to discount the value a bit for risk that it doesn't produce the results.
9)Targeted Book Summaries - You can find or purchase executive book summaries on business related books. They will summarize dozens of books for a fee. Since this is usually going to take an initial financial cost and/or investment of your time... the ROI might be $200 cost but the time saved is similar to target reading. Since it costs $200 for a year's worth of access to the summaries you might convert $200 at your hourly wage (or non wage earning value after taxes and costs of working) of say $10 to 20 hours worth of work rather than look at it as $200. Thus saving 650 hours or so a year with an investment of 20 hours is worth 650/20=32.5=3150% ROI
10)Accelerated Book Summaries - Combine speed reading with book summaries. Many book summary sites also offer audio books. Combine accelerated audio with book summaries! Doing so will either allow you to dramatically boost your relevant words per minute, or dramatically reduce the time spent listening or reading to digest the same value of information... or some of each. I think you can produce around a 2000% ROI while consuming twice as much information as regular targeted book summaries.
Secret bonus! :-)
11)Delegation. If you do not know how to do a particular task, you should have no trouble finding people that specialize in that task. If you might do something in 12 hours, an expert might be able to do it in 2 hours on average. Thus, even though it might use up 12 hours of your time which might be worth $10/hour *12 =$120, the person you hire could earn a rate of $20/hr and only charge you $80. A true WIN/WIN situation. In order to delegate, you are looking for these situations. You value your time at an hourly rate, and multiply the number of total hours it takes you to complete it while working exclusively on that task. This is the most you should be willing to pay to have the task done. Alternatively, you should look at the ROI of you doing a particular task a different way vs hiring someone else to do it. If you can find someone that does it for less, or for a higher ROI after considering the costs to find an assistant, communicate your needs, pay him, and troubleshoot through problems, you should be willing to. After mapping out all of your task manage your money so that you spend it on the highest payoff ROI. Manage your time so that you spend it on your highest payoff task whenever possible so that you can have both excess money and time and use both appropriately to create more.
close calls that didn't make the list but are huge time savers: Quit Watching TV,Stay Organized, exercising (shown to boost productivity) Single Handling Tasks, Multitasking (low value tasks only like reading while cooking, listening while driving) Work From A List,Ergonomics,Accelerate Deadlines (see Parkinson's law),Avoid Interruptions,Avoid Idle Behavior Such As Socializing, Waking up Early to beat rush hour and work on the most important task first.
What's your best productivity tip?
1) Successful people not only believe "TIME IS MONEY", but they know "how much" time is worth in dollars, and how much money is worth in hours and they manage it well. The key thing in determining what is most productive is looking for the return on investment whether that be time or money. If you know you are worth $10 an hour, you should spend up to $10 to save you 1 hour if you have the money and focus on the highest payoff task first (provided you can actually convert that saved time directly into earnings). You can also resolve to convert time to money, or invest in something that saves you money. The other key is managing what you have. You can't just continue to spend money on saving time if you do not have the money to do so. You need to create excess of both so you can invest your time into projects that boost your earnings, and invest your money into tasks that will save you time.
2) If you don't have a habit of reading information and listening to audio books (and watching videos) to boost your knowledge... start. The reinvestment in yourself, your knowledge, etc can create a huge impact provided you are able to convert the skills, lessons, and boosted production/earnings into action at some point.
Now I will get to the 10 Best Bang For Buck Tips To Being Hyper Productive as promised in the title
1)Practice Targeted Reading - I also call this "reading with a purpose". Start with a goal of the information you want, actively scan through table of contents on books of the topic. Pick the most interesting, relevant chapters and only read the most relevant chapters, or subsections of each chapter. This will cut down your workload and allow you to get the most relevant, useful information per minute. I estimate that you can cut the reading workload from a 75,000 book down to 7,500 or less.
Given a 2 hour per day reading habit 730hours -73hours = 657 hours of savings. ROI = 657/2=328.50-1 =
32,750% ROI! That may be conservative if you consider that you not only can reduce the workload of books but also eliminate the need for reading books before you even start.
2) Speed Reading - Speed reading provides a great ROI. It may take a few hours to learn but if you read enough it will quickly pay off. Tim Ferris has a great article on how to boost reading by 300%. I think although reading comprehension tends to go down as WPM goes up, one with a habit of reading 2 hours a day could still realistically save 300 hours a year with just 2 hours investment of time specifically on developing this skill. ROI 15,000%
3) Double Audio Learning Speed - I don't know if it is appropriate to link to one of my articles, but using windows media player you can increase the speed of mp3 players to up to 8 times which allegedly is in the subconscious learning range. Unfortunately you probably won't be able to consciously comprehend much beyond the range of 2 - 4 times the speed even with practice. You can do this using other mp3 players as well and then mix them down to an mp3 and take it on the road with you. Since audio is typically listened to when you aren't free to read and are doing something else (driving, cooking, etc) This doubles the info in a year rather than doubles the time. As such the ROI is difficult to determine, but subjectively I'd say you get 500 hours of value with 12 hours of work preparing and maintaining the mp3 player and the mp3s themselves. estimated ROI 4066.67%
4) Double Video Learning - Again, I don't know if it is appropriate to link to one of my articles go to youtube.com/HTML7 and if you have a computer and browser that allows, turn the HTML 7 on and you can put videos at 2x the speed after loading the video and clicking on the setting. 90,000 ROI with 150 hours of listening a year since it takes just minutes to double the speed but lower net hourly savings per year.
5) Optimize Sleep - How much time do you toss and turn before bed or lay in bed while the alarm clock blares? Steve Pavlina and Tim Ferris both have lots of great material on improving the quality of sleep as well as the time it takes to get to sleep, and get out of bed, and even uberman polyphasic sleep schedules to sleep 4 hours a day. If you normally can spend 30 less minutes in bed awake by spending a couple hours reading articles and training yourself that will results in about 9000% ROI and add 182.5 productive hours a year.
6)Eliminate Distraction - Steve Pavlina claims he was able to nearly triple his productivity simply by keeping a time journal and eliminating the "non-working tasks" and finding ways to get more value out of working so that his productive hours went up nearly 3 times. This could be the most useful tip of all as if you are able to triple productivity that could add around 1000 productive hours a year while only investing say 4 hours resulting in a 25,900% ROI and directly converting that time saved to valuable working hours.
7)Brian Tracy claims that planning in advance results in 10 minutes of productivity for every 1 minute you spend or a 900% ROI (he says 1000% but that is a common mistake of inaccurate math since the 1 is the cost so you have to subtract it to find the net return. I.E. Doubling your income would earn 2x as much but be a 100% increase, not 200%).
8)Mobile University - Another thing Brian Tracy talks about is creating a "mobile university". The average person spends 2 hours a day in a car. If you start listening to audiotapes while driving you can get 2 hours of use when you normally are doing nothing. The investment converts 2*365 or 730 unused hours to productive times but since that time saved can never be converted into "working time" as a result, the actual ROI depends on the degree by which it boosts your earnings power. If 730 hours of audio doubles your earning power and costs a few hundred a year in audiobooks or a few hours of your time, then you can calculate ROI. But this is too speculative and as such it is more difficult to put a number on this, and if I did, I would have to discount the value a bit for risk that it doesn't produce the results.
9)Targeted Book Summaries - You can find or purchase executive book summaries on business related books. They will summarize dozens of books for a fee. Since this is usually going to take an initial financial cost and/or investment of your time... the ROI might be $200 cost but the time saved is similar to target reading. Since it costs $200 for a year's worth of access to the summaries you might convert $200 at your hourly wage (or non wage earning value after taxes and costs of working) of say $10 to 20 hours worth of work rather than look at it as $200. Thus saving 650 hours or so a year with an investment of 20 hours is worth 650/20=32.5=3150% ROI
10)Accelerated Book Summaries - Combine speed reading with book summaries. Many book summary sites also offer audio books. Combine accelerated audio with book summaries! Doing so will either allow you to dramatically boost your relevant words per minute, or dramatically reduce the time spent listening or reading to digest the same value of information... or some of each. I think you can produce around a 2000% ROI while consuming twice as much information as regular targeted book summaries.
Secret bonus! :-)
11)Delegation. If you do not know how to do a particular task, you should have no trouble finding people that specialize in that task. If you might do something in 12 hours, an expert might be able to do it in 2 hours on average. Thus, even though it might use up 12 hours of your time which might be worth $10/hour *12 =$120, the person you hire could earn a rate of $20/hr and only charge you $80. A true WIN/WIN situation. In order to delegate, you are looking for these situations. You value your time at an hourly rate, and multiply the number of total hours it takes you to complete it while working exclusively on that task. This is the most you should be willing to pay to have the task done. Alternatively, you should look at the ROI of you doing a particular task a different way vs hiring someone else to do it. If you can find someone that does it for less, or for a higher ROI after considering the costs to find an assistant, communicate your needs, pay him, and troubleshoot through problems, you should be willing to. After mapping out all of your task manage your money so that you spend it on the highest payoff ROI. Manage your time so that you spend it on your highest payoff task whenever possible so that you can have both excess money and time and use both appropriately to create more.
close calls that didn't make the list but are huge time savers: Quit Watching TV,Stay Organized, exercising (shown to boost productivity) Single Handling Tasks, Multitasking (low value tasks only like reading while cooking, listening while driving) Work From A List,Ergonomics,Accelerate Deadlines (see Parkinson's law),Avoid Interruptions,Avoid Idle Behavior Such As Socializing, Waking up Early to beat rush hour and work on the most important task first.
What's your best productivity tip?
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