Productivity Today: Finding Your Flow for Maximal Productivity

Surprise! I actually created two new classes with Skillshare this year and this one is all about how to enter the flow state of mind while working!

Flow is the state of being fully in the moment and completely immersed in an activity to the point of effectively disappearing into it. In it, there’s no conscious division between the doer and what’s being done—there’s only the doing.

Flow can transform your experience at work, as well as your productivity, satisfaction, and happiness. While there is no hard and fast rules for inducing flow, there are ways for you to recreate meaningful flow in your life. Join me as I share my methods for unlocking your potential at work and setting yourself up to be more productive with flow. You can take the online class for free here. 

Together, you will:

• Understand the meaning of flow

• Find where flow already exists in your life

• Analyze flow themes and build your personal flow strategy

• Share these strategies amongst your team and encourage others to reach their full potential

A 10-year McKinsey study on flow and productivity found that top executives are five times more productive during flow. That’s a 500% increase in productivity.

Whether you’d like to increase your productivity at work or simply find joy in what you do, this class will provide you with the tools to harness flow in any scenario. I hope it helps and that you truly enjoy this masterclass in finding focus.

Productivity Optimization: Tips and Tools for Automating Your Workflows

With over 55,000 students and over 1 million minutes watched on my previous Skillshare classes, I am excited to announce my newest class on how to set up workflow automations!

Automation softwares are so important for becoming more efficient and creating meaningful output across your team. Join me as I share top productivity tools for automating your workflows, enabling you to refocus your energy on what you're passionate about and become the best version of yourself. You can take the class free here. 

Together, you will learn how to:

• Measure your time in order to maximize your ROI

• Determine the automation opportunities within your workflows

• Plan and build your workflow automation, with tools like Zapier.

• Re-measure your ROI to ensure you are actually saving time and energy

• Maintain and monitor your automations for long term success

Whether you’re in a leadership position on your team or just starting out, this class will provide you with the tools to focus on what really matters and exercise your creativity in the process. I hope it helps and that you enjoy this automation masterclass.

Productivity Today: Managing Attention in the Digital Age

Want to be more productive? I’m excited to announce my new free online class with Skillshare & Todoist on better managing your attention in the digital age. In this class, I’ll share how you can increase your attention span, quiet your mind, and get more done. You can take the online class for free here. 

In today’s world, everyone wants your attention. From app and website notifications to emails and calendar invites, it can be difficult to stay focused on the task at hand. In this class, I'll share how you can increase your attention span, quiet your mind, and get more done. You’ll learn how to:

• Hone your ability to focus

• Reduce daily distractions

• Improve your prioritization process

Whether you’re freelance or full-time, everyone can benefit from learning how to better manage their attention. After taking this class, you’ll regain control over your own attention, allowing you to put your focus where you want it and be more productive every day. Learn to control your attention and take your productivity to new heights in this class.

Protecting Your Time

Both for better and for worse, the way we work in the new digital age is changing fast. The freedom to work anywhere is causing us to work everywhere. The result is that too often we find ourselves being pulled from email to meeting, to text message, to social media notification, to lunch meeting, to viral meme of the day, to phone calls, and so on. In what feels like the blink of an eye 8:00 am becomes 8:00 pm. We end the day having been incredibly busy. But are we really being productive (getting shit done) or creative (having original ideas), both of which are essential to building a strong business. 

Time is the scarcest personal resource in existence. Unlike money, which every year the government prints more of, your time is finite. You can never get more time than the amount you were born with and therefore it is priceless. It is your duty to protect it.

Protecting your time so your mind has time to actually think and your body has time to actually get shit done is something which can be a bit tricky. I recently blew up my calendar to make some lifestyle changes in the pursuit of being more efficient, better focused, and having a greater clarity in the way I work. I have been finding these new changes very effective, so I thought I would share them with you. 

Monday:

After the weekend it is important to start the week organized. Aside from one global call with the Founder Institute Directors from all over the world, Monday is reserved for E-mail and getting organized. Reaching inbox zero each Monday allows the peace of mind later in the week to know I am not missing anything urgent that may have come up this week. While answering and archiving e-mail, the action items from them get moved onto my to-do list for the week. 

Tuesday:

Starting Tuesday with the peace of mind that my inbox is in great shape is incredibly refreshing. Especially because there will not be much time for e-mail today. Tuesdays are for meetings! I try to schedule all my meetings and coffees exclusively on Tuesdays. Back to back meetings can make for an exhausting day, but I have found I am able to give much more attention to being present & attentive during meetings, as I am not thinking about e-mail throughout the day. Again, the action items from my meetings get moved onto my to-do list for the week.  

Wednesday, Thursday & Friday: 

With the bulk of e-mail and meetings behind me for the week, it is now time to get shit done. It's time to throw on my headphones, a great playlist, and to start crossing tasks off of my to-do list. I use Todoist, which provides karma insights into how productive I am being week to week. I have seen a big uptick in the amount of actual productive work I have been getting done. 

This time is also for getting your creative brain power flowing again. I have been finding that around Thursday afternoon I have usually accomplished enough tasks that the original ideas start to come flowing naturally again. These moments are essential if you want to actually innovate on your business in unique ways, as opposed to just doing what everyone else is.

Weekend: 

Spend time with family and friends. Taking the time to maintain your personal relationships is vital to playing the long game of life. It will be a lonely and difficult journey without them. Many an entrepreneur have missed the mark here and you need to make sure you're not one of them.

Be bored! I mean it. To clarify though, watching Netflix is not being bored. That's just called relaxing. I am talking about actually letting your mind wander. This is when the best original ideas come to you. For you, this might be while in the shower. For me, this is at the gym, while I am driving, or while I am walking around New York City. You need to give creativity the room to strike you. 

More: 

• Over-ear headphones make a difference. I love my Apple Airpods while walking around the city, but they do a lousy job preventing you from hearing distractions like side conversations while you're working. Getting even a cheap $20 pair of over-ear headphones will help you focus. 
• Work to accomplish tasks within specific blocks of time. We have a shot clock style timer in the office we set when doing work. You may not always get your tasks done within the set amount of time, but regardless it will give you self-awareness into how long tasks are taking and how much you are actually getting done. 
• Tracking your progress is the only way to know how you're getting better. You can use services such as Escape or RescueTime to track how often you're getting distracted. And a to-do list app such as Todoist to track how many tasks you're accomplishing. 
• Set up something to block websites you traditionally find distracting. There are many to choose from but I have recently been using one called "Go F**cking Work" because I liked its motivational tone. 
• If you really need help pulling away from the addiction of technology then be sure to use Onward. A new app which helps you change your overuse behavior in 1 minute per day to achieve tech-life balance!

Obviously, this is a pretty rigid schedule that can be hard to maintain. And yes, there are weeks where meetings happen on a Monday, work happens on the weekends, or e-mails get answered on a Thursday, but think of this more as a goal. When you find what works best for you and you start to constantly follow it effectively, I promise you will start to get some of your brain power back for yourself. Allowing you to dictate your future as opposed to everyone else dictating it for you. 

Time Management For Entrepreneurs

I believe there is tremendous value in optimization. Increasing effectiveness even by a slight amount can have exponential effects as a result. Since taking a step back and thinking about planning my life in 2016 I have been working on ways to optimize life. One of those is time management, which I feel is something that can have a profound impact on most entrepreneurs. 

I value time as the most important asset in my life. It is finite. The fact is that there is no Department of Time to print more hours, days or years like there is a Department of Treasury to print more money when the supply runs low. 

There are 24 hours in a day. That is all you get. Make sure you spend each one of those hours wisely. We have been given the gift of time and it is our duty to make the most of it. Those 24 hours will be spent on either sleep, work, exercise, family, fun or free time.

I was originally going to elaborately detail my own day for this post but I have really liked the way Casey Neistat broke down his daily routine using the painted domino's visually in the below video. I have skipped ahead to the good part of the video (3:32) so you can jump right in. My routine in 2016 has been very similar to the image above. The major difference being that I swap vlog time with blog and podcast time. Also a night or two a week family time gets swapped for me with running event's in the evening around New York. 

I like the balance that routine brings to the day in order to allow for more productivity in the long run. It also helps reduce burn out, which can be a real issue for entrepreneurs if not addressed. I look forward to continuing to maximize each day to the fullest potential I can. Let me know if you have a routine or any suggestions on maximizing the day. Feel free to put them in the comments below.