A summary of things you should know about How to be a Productivity Ninja according to Graham Allcott: Introduction In this episode Graham Allcott takes a deep dive into hisRead More
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]]>In this episode Graham Allcott takes a deep dive into his book, How to be a Productivity Ninja, where he shows you how to worry less, achieve more, and love what you do.
In his book Allcott combines all of his teachings from his public productivity workshops from all around the world into a simple, effective guide to working faster and smarter. The goal of the book is to teach you how to overcome procrastination, how to use email more efficiently, new ways to increase your personal time, and how to de-clutter an information overload.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who own more than one business or run a time intensive business and need help balancing their overloaded schedule in order to work more efficiently.
My book is very real, hands on, and dives right into the practicality of where you are personally.
I originally wrote the book to be read from front to back but there are some who pick in and out.
Don’t manage time, manage attention. Look at the two or three hours that you are on top form and schedule your task according to that.
The first chapter is all about developing a mindset of a ninja to use in your productivity. This is about living in the present moment and not thinking about what you need to do or worrying about tomorrow. People’s best work happens when they are present and in the moment. We talk about being ruthless, ruthless with yourself and being ruthless with others. I go over reasons why we get stressed, attention management, and best ways to go about using your e-mail.
Then we get into what I call the CORD Productivity Model that has four elements which are capturing and collecting information, organizing, reviewing, and the psychology of doing. The capturing and collect element is about getting things out of your head and getting that information into what I call the second brain. The key to organizing is having a good set of list; I suggest having an overarching master to-do list and an overarching project list. The review element is where I ask myself a series of questions each morning to go over what I need to get done. The last element of the CORD productivity is the psychology of doing what needs to get done. Even though you know what to do it’s sometimes hard to find the momentum to get things started so I give you different ways to create it and ways to trick your brain into doing it.
There are also chapters on product management and meetings.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 06:36
“Time management is dead.” – Graham Allcott
“A ninja is not a superhero but they often appear so.” – Graham Allcott
I run a company called Think Productive and am an author. For the last few years I’ve been involved in productivity training and coaching with some of the biggest companies in the UK and increasingly around the world. At the moment my life is traveling the world and being the evangelist for Productivity Ninja.
The inspiration for me was my own journey with productivity. I used to be a chief executive of a charity here in the UK and I went freelance. And when I went freelance I realized that I no longer had a team of people around me and knew I had a problem and needed to develop my own skills. I started reading lots of different books, blogs, and experimenting with different systems to develop my own take on the topic of productivity. I am a big believer that the things you struggle to learn yourself are the things you should teach to other people so I started doing just that.
Making It All Work by David Allen
Linchpin by Seth Godin
Buy How To Be A Productivity Ninja by Graham Allcott on Amazon today
Visit ThinkProductive.co.uk to learn more about Graham and his book
Follow Graham Allcott on Facebook and Twitter
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
Work Smarter by Nick Loper
Procrastinate on Purpose by Rory Vaden
Work Simply by Carson Tate
Relevant advice and tips:
6 Practical Tips to Become an Effective Entrepreneur
7 Productivity Tools That Every Entrepreneur Should Be Using Today
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
The post A Preview of How To Be A Productivity Ninja with Graham Allcott appeared first on The Entrepreneurs Library.
]]>A summary of things you should know about Work Simply according to Carson Tate: Introduction In this episode Carson Tate takes a deep dive into her book, Work Simply, whereRead More
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]]>In this episode Carson Tate takes a deep dive into her book, Work Simply, where she provides a system to help make work less complicated and more organized.
In her book Tate gives you a step-by-step productivity system that is separated into four custom styles that are uniquely fit for different types of learners and doers. The goal of the book is to help you identify your own unique productivity style, maximize your effectiveness, lead great meetings, communicate properly, and tell how your desk defines your work style.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs that maintain a very busy schedule, work over 40 hours a week, and need help organizing tasks into an effective system.
The key difference from my book is that it is based on this concept that I developed called productivity style. In the book you take an assessment to determine your thinking style and once you discern your type then the rest of the book you customize strategies and tools based on your type.
I absolutely do not recommend you read my book front to back. I would suggest that you go to the chapter or chapters in the book that speak to your current challenge and read that content.
It would be to personalize your productivity. Decide to no longer accept a one size fits all solution for your time or e-mail or communication challenges. Push back and understand your thinking style and then rigorously filter and only allow in those strategies and tools that are in alignment with you and the way that you work.
Early on in the book there is a chapter on your productivity style, why it matters, and how to identify it.
Then the book moves into the areas that I think most of us really struggle with in our businesses. In this section there is a chapter about Managing Your Attention and in our 24/7, always connected world, how do you manage your attention so that you’re able to focus on your goals and priorities. And this chapter looks at how to control against distractions, how to manage “emergencies”, and also how to manage your technology.
Then the books moves on to Setting Priorities. Everybody knows about setting priorities but I introduce a new framework here that I call Ready Goals and these goals are slightly different than most of us have been taught around Smart Goals in that they are realistic, exciting, action oriented, directive, and ultimately they are yours.
Next I look very specifically at the challenge we face like investing your time wisely, how to free your brain and build an effective master task list, how to get more done, and then how to tame your inbox. And then we move into how to shape your space. How do you shape your physical environment regardless of where you work for optimal performance?
Each of the sections start with best practices and each one have very specific strategies for you based on your productivity style. Each chapter also has very detailed charts that make it very easy to access the information and most of them are downloadable from the website.
In the third part of the book we talk about how to work more effectively with others. This section looks at how to delegate effectively and gives you charts on productivity style clues so that you can identify the style of your direct reports, the style of your investors and vendors. Then there is a section on working well with others and why we have what I call these productivity clashes and what to do about them. And the finally piece in this section is around meetings and how to get work done in and through them.
I end the book with a high level summary so that you can pull out the nuggets and take away what you want.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 07:38
“Every time you say yes to something you’re saying no to something else.” – Carson Tate
I am the owner and founder of a company called Working Simply and that’s my personal mission as well as my company’s mission to help individuals, teams, and organizations streamline and simplify their workflow.
I am very privileged to have the opportunity to work with really high achieving entrepreneurs and business owners and as I was working with them I was finding that they were struggling in trying to adopt and adapt some of the time management, productivity, best practices in the marketplace. So they were feeling frustrated and overwhelmed because the latest and greatest app or blog post that they read wasn’t working for them. I realized that it wasn’t the lack of drive but rather the tools that they were using weren’t aligned to the way they think. So I wanted to write a book that helped people identify the way they think and then align their thinking styles to the way they actually work so that they can be more productive and more discerning.
Essentialism by Greg McKeown
Buy Work Simply by Carson Tate on Amazon today
Visit CarsonTate.com to learn more about Carson and take her productivity assessment
Follow Carson Tate on Twitter and Facebook
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
Work Smarter by Nick Loper
Four Seconds by Peter Bregman
Procrastinate on Purpose by Rory Vaden
Relevant advice and tips:
6 Practical Tips to Become an Effective Entrepreneur
7 Productivity Tools For Entrepreneurs To Make Life Easier
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
The post A Preview of Work Simply with Carson Tate appeared first on The Entrepreneurs Library.
]]>7 Productivity Tools For Entrepreneurs To Make Life Easier What is the one thing that every entrepreneur wishes for? Well, you may get different sets of wishes, but one thingRead More
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]]>7 Productivity Tools For Entrepreneurs To Make Life Easier
What is the one thing that every entrepreneur wishes for? Well, you may get different sets of wishes, but one thing that is for sure is entrepreneurs need more time. When you start a new business, you have to handle numerous and tedious responsibilities on a daily basis.
Every entrepreneur needs more time in the day so that it becomes easier to manage everything and stay on top. But is it possible? It is when you add automation and handy apps to your bag of entrepreneurial tricks.
Here’s a basic list of productivity tools for entrepreneurs that will make it possible to maximize your workday:
Yast: When your focus is on saving time, you need to have a tool like this for tracking time first. Be it tracking how many hours you spend on a particular task or how much work has been put into a project, this tool makes it easy and simple.
It’s free for personal use; and available at a reasonable cost for business use.
Evernote: You never know when a “lightbulb” moment comes. This tool makes it easy to store and track spontaneous thoughts, ideas, perceptions, etc. It also helps you create a proper environment to get things done on time.
Good news – it is available for free for Android, iOS, and Web versions.
Trello: Project management often becomes a nightmare for startups. This is where this tool comes to help. With it, you can create project boards, almost same as Pinterest, and add and manage individuals and resources on them, similar to Basecamp HQ.
Whatever the size of your team, you can use this tool for free.
Dropbox: Storing and sharing documents was never this easy! The beauty of this tool lies in its simplicity. And you can access it from anywhere, anytime, and from any device. You need not worry about damaging or deleting your files too, as it keeps them secure.
You can get loads of benefits from the free version; you can upgrade to Pro or Business too.
LastPass: Cyber criminals are becoming more of a threat to our businesses and to prevent ourselves from becoming prey we need strong, secure passwords for the ungodly amount of online accounts we have. The problem is having to remember them all. LastPass saves you from having to reset your stupid password everytime and stores them with one secure login.
You can get the benefits for free; but you need to upgrade for mobile integration (which I suggest).
Bitrix24: A central program that offers a host of CRM tools for easy management of data, this one also comes with a social intranet system. Whether you are tracking contacts, messaging, managing the sales funnel, planning activities, this tool can be of immense help.
You can use it for free for teams of up to 12 people; and upgrade if your team’s larger.
HipChat: When it comes to internal communications, this is perhaps the best tool to manage it. Create chat rooms, invite specific users, message and share files – you can do it all from this. It saves both time and money and helps organize things. It is far more reliable than the other IM apps out there.
The fee for using this chat tool is quite reasonable; so, it fits the expense budget rather well.
Getting more done in 24 hours may be a challenge for a new entrepreneur, but it does not need to be if you know how to do it right. All you need to do is find the right tools for extra help, and you’ll get more work done, and even have time to spare (yeah right!).
Work Smarter by Nick Loper | Listen to Nick give a deep dive here
How To Succeed in 12 Months by Serena Star-Leonard | Listen to Serena give a deep dive here
Smartcuts by Shane Snow | Listen to Shane give a deep dive here
Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland | Listen to Jeff give a deep dive here
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]]>A summary of things you should know about Work Smarter according to Nick Loper Introduction In this episode Nick Loper shares his book Work Smarter which provides entrepreneurs with overRead More
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]]>In this episode Nick Loper shares his book Work Smarter which provides entrepreneurs with over 350 online resources to increase productivity. This book is perfect for the entrepreneur in need of the best project management tools to help achieve goals faster and truly work smarter. The best part about the book is that these recommended tools come from over 500 successful people that use them today.
The difference is probably the breath and the curation. These are user tools recommended by top entrepreneurs and more than 500 people submitted contributions to the book.
I recommend that if there is a particular area of your business that you’re interested in you can skip to that section. There are 20 different categories so definitely feel free to jump around as needed.
There are so many in this book that I have used but ScheduleOnce is a favorite of mine.
The main idea behind this and why someone would want to invest the time to read it would be to essentially save yourself some time. It is 350 plus online resources today’s top entrepreneurs use to increase productivity and achieve their goals.
For a bigger deep dive check out the full transcript here
I was surprised with the ones that rose to the top, a couple that I have never even heard of. Sona is a project management software online that is free for up to 15 members of your team. Any small business that is just getting started can use this software and this was one of the most popular answers in the whole study we did. Another one was PicMonkey which is an online editing software. I am going through all these tools as well and testing them out for myself.
I am the chief side hustler at sidehustlenation.com where I get to experiment with a bunch of different part-time business opportunities trying to make money outside of your traditional 9-5 job and I help other people do the same. I have been running that for a little over a year, it’s been an absolute blast and so if you’re interested in trying to develop some job-free income streams of your own, come on over and join me.
The inspiration for me is the joy of discovery, that new tool that’s going to help you save even just five minutes a day.
Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
Buy Work Smarter by Nick Loper on Amazon today
Visit WorkSmarter.co to learn more about the book
Subscribe to the Side Hustle Show on iTunes
Follow Nick Loper on Twitter and Facebook
Download the full transcript here
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books: Habit Stacking: 97 Small Life Changes That Take Five Minutes or Less by S.J. Scott | The Suitcase Entrepreneur: Create freedom in business and adventure in life by Natalie Sisson | Smartcuts by Shane Snow
Relevant advice and tips: 7 Productivity Tools For Entrepreneurs To Make Life Easier | The Advantages of Technology in the Life of an Entrepreneur
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
The post A Preview of Work Smarter with Nick Loper appeared first on The Entrepreneurs Library.
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