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Ninja Productivity Ebook
Ninja Productivity Ebook
Table of Contents
An Introduction to Ninja Productivity...............................................................................3 Developing Unshakable Focus on the Task at Hand.............................................................5 If You Only Get One Thing Done Today, Do This.................................................................7 Only a Tired, Broke Entrepreneur Does Everything Himself..................................................9 Think of Your Workweek as a Budget of Hours..................................................................11 Setting Time Limits on Your Business...............................................................................13 Can You Think & Act at the Same Time?...........................................................................15 Your Steel-Walled Bomb Shelter for Undistracted Work......................................................17 When the Going Gets Tough, Quit (Answering the Phone).................................................18 Have You Considered Speed Reading?..............................................................................20 Maximizing Your Time R.O.I.............................................................................................22
Your Journey Begins So with that in mind, the following chapters have been arranged to take you first through some inner shifts that can help you start out right as a Productivity Ninja. Then, you'll learn some general strategies for using your time, and then deadly finishing moves you can apply to your working environment and training. Your journey begins here...Good luck!
If you get a great idea about another post or something else besides this post, jot it down quickly and get back to writing your post. If you get a phone call, check the Caller ID to see who it isand save it for later if it can wait. If you feel like checking your email, resist the urge. Get back on track.
One way to stay focused on the task at hand is to write it down before you start on it. This helps you to 1) Choose the most important thing to work on, and 2) Stay on track once youve started until you're done. If you think that writing down what youre doing would be a pain because youd have to 5
update it every 2 minutes with Answered the phone and Sent an email, that's EXACTLY why you should use a time log. You might pick one thing and work on it for 10-20 minutes, then move on to doing emails all at once. Grouping tasks together to do in one sitting is a powerful way to stay focused, save time, and not be distracted. There are several good time-management planners and time journals out there. But no matter which one you use (or even if it's jotted down on some nearby paper) recording how you actually use your time can be just as effective as planning how to use your time in the first place.
There is nothing more important. If you miss contact with a hot buyer today, then this will be the very same day that they decide to accept someone elses offer because they didnt hear back from you. Has that ever happened to you? Nothing is more frustrating. Considering each new lead gives you the chance to make potential profits, Id say that 7
plenty of other stuff can afford to get put off another day.
Everything else can wait. Dont let any new deals slip away like a fish you almost landed in the boat by getting distracted with paperwork, planning, paying bills, etc. Spend time first on closing new business, then take care of the rest in the remaining time. Just trust that this will all work. Many of us put off doing this because of hidden fears...make sure you're not procrastinating just to avoid this! It can be done in a short amount of time. Lets get realpeople you call dont usually answer the phone each time you ring anyway. 30 minutes should be more than enough time to call your hottest prospects back first, and then everyone else later if you still have time. Go through your leads, seperate the best ones, and call them first. Even if youre just telling them that youll get back to them soon, they will appreciate being in the loop.
Its likely that no one else can do it for you. Unless you have a trained assistant who knows how to communicate with prospects, you are probably the only one in your company who can contact these leads. If you do, then congratulations. Replace Call Your Prospects with Send Your Assistant Their Daily Assignment.
One more tip Regardless of how and when you do it, contacting your interested leads is the one thing that, if nothing else, you simply must take care of every day, even if you only have a few minutes to work on your business. And, even if its a day when you have a ton of free time, it still makes a lot of sense to do this task early on in case you get barraged with work later. Then, with it done, you can rest assured knowing that no matter what crisis or surprise comes up later in the day and sucks up all your time, the most important and profitable thing has already been taken care of. Put generating the money first and everything else will get its turnI promise! 8
In this case, an assistant is also the answer to getting what you want. While every entrepreneur is different, many of our challenges tend to be the same. We're all busy! But the difference is he who outsources can work several days in the time of one, and he who does it all alone is limited to one day's pay for one day's work. If you haven't discovered this yet, I can assure you you'll wonder how you ever survived as long as you did without it. Got that business goal or project that would make your revenue go up? Just hire some help. Find the right person and put them to work immediately. Dont put it off any longer. Do it now, and youll thank yourself for the rest of your life.
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always be Of course. It will never all be done, just like you will never not need to buy groceries anymore. Whats important is how you manage however many hours are in your time budget. Look back at your day and what you did. I bet there were some things you did that took 30 minutes that werent as important. The key is to budget, budget, budgetand then watch that thing like a HAWK.
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know that you only have a short time frame. This isn't wishful thinking I'm talking about here, either. This has been demonstrated in workplace settings. Only rather than trying to cram more things into your day than can possibly be done, you're taking a ruthless measure to intentionally limit your time (which then helps you to stay alert and focused during the day on the most important thingsnot busy work). Test this for a week and see for yourself!
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You dont have to know everything in order to get started, People use thinking as an excuse to procrastinate and delay taking action, Better to do something and make mistakes than not at all, Ready, Fire, Aim, etc.
I agree with all of the above, as fear can keep us from setting our sights high and so this deserves to be repeated. A regrettably high percentage of people who consume articles, books, and courses do not end up applying what they learn. So how do you know when you've thought about something enough, and when you have enough initial information and strategy to commit and get started? Finding the Balance Here are my thoughts about the balance between spending more time thinking and planning what to do vs more time taking action:
Action-oriented people tend to make more money and make it faster than thinkerbrained folks. Action-oriented people, while making more money, tend to be constantly busy and overwhelmed with business (because they are doing deals, which is a good problem to have compared to an empty planner and matching bank account. At some point, though, you will have to start thinking and planning your next initiative, or how to keep the higher workload running smoothly. Until then, be willing to have the world's messiest process and desk spaceas long as you spend most of your time marketing and promoting your business. The rest can wait. This, then, will require someone to balance meeting todays needs and goals (action) with planning and creating processes and systems (thinking). This is hard to do, as most folks are either one or the other, but must be done and with the right proportions.
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The pathway to progress is, then, to FIRST become used to taking action without having all the facts or everything in place (unless you already are), and THEN learning how to force yourself to take a few hours per week and EXAMINE the way youre doing things and devise ways to do things better. Personally, I spend about 10% of my working time on planning, learning, and goal-setting. The rest is effectively spent carrying out those plans myself and managing the results of others on my team. But for now, I just want to emphasize that action is good, thinking is good, and doing both in the right proportions is the key to getting free of your business.
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B) their email address. I flat-out tell people that I am unable to return most phone calls, and to leave their email address. If they dont leave it, I dont call them back (with a few exceptions). If people dont respect my communication preferences, I do not respect their request to communicate. Remember, you are not obligated to return someones call. You do not owe it to them. They called you. They interrupted you. You never said youd call them back. If you did, do it. If not, good for you! It took me forever to get comfortable with not returning calls. Now I laugh in delight as I press the erase button on my answering machine. You can do the same. NOTE: I'll just add here that you just want to screen out calls that are less important or urgent than what you're currently doing right this second. Don't take this to the extreme or you might wake up without customers or friends! A Few Important Calls A mere 10% were actually important, and merited a return call and not an email. These I returned myself or had my assistant do it. Isnt this interesting? 90 PERCENT of calls could either be ignored or returned by email. Think about that! Most communication does not require a verbal exchange. For the most part,it goes: Incoming Message = Information + Question. Outgoing Response = Answer. Why this exchange needs to be done A) Verbally, and B) In Person is beyond me. MOST PHONE CALLS ARE JUST REQUESTS FOR INFORMATION! Therefore, they can usually wait unless it's urgent and very important. Use your judgment here. So long story short...find a way to get peoples questions from them and deliver responses in as timely a way as possibleand you will go from overwhelmed to focused and effective in an equally timely manner.
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His classmates laughed at the idea and said it would never work, but he figured that spending $20 on a book or program with the potential to save a total of 320 hours of studying throughout the remainder of his college experience was a worthwhile investment, especially considering these same classmates were regularly spending commensurate amounts at the drop of a hat on trendy music, grease, and beer. So he got the program shown above, and it worked for him. I recommend it, though at the same time there may be better books out there. But I at least know that this one works if you apply it. Anyway, consider how speed-reading could help you: 1) Learn more at a faster rate, and therefore empower you to implement new business strategies faster (and make money sooner, not later) 2) Create more hours each week that you can spend doing things that create revenue, or by not working at all 3) Read quickly and with focus when its time to work, then put the book down when its time.
NOTE: If it took you longer than 2 minutes to read this, you should have been speed reading:)
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Five hours is a lot of timeespecially if you only have 10-15 hours per week to run your business part-time.
What would you give for five more hours of productive, money-generating time each week? Or perhaps for five more hours of tennis, playing with the kids, reading, or whatever it is you love to do?
I thought I was delegating everything I should be. But here, even the Master of Management has been caught red-handed, wasting his time. This goes to show that EVERYONE could stand to analyze their time every so often. What is your time per hour worth? If my time is worth $50 per hour, then I am wasting my time doing something that someone else could do for $10/hr. Or, as many virtual assistants charge overseas, $4-5 per hour.
The things I caught myself doing were repetitive business items like submitting an article to online article directories, getting other links to my website, copying the results of the previous weeks newsletter emails (# of opens, # of clicks, etc) into a spreadsheet. I kind of rationalized for a while about how I needed to save money or whatever, but then I realized I had a few projects on the shelf that I could knock out myself in about 10-20 hours that could start generating more income immediately. Remember: Your time is best spent starting and managing new projects that will generate more cash. Hire people to help you carry those out and get there faster. And by all means hire an assistant or someone to carry out the repetitive tasks that go on every week and month. Let someone else hold down the fort. Your job is to create new ways to advertise, make sales, and add products and services to your lineup.
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So let's say I set out to find a virtual assistant abroad that I could outsource these tasks to every week and thereby free up 5 more hours of my time. Total cost: $20/week Time Savings: $250 (saving you 5 hours of your time, valued at $50/hour) This ROI would be several time what I invested, as long as I spend the new time I save doing something that generates $50 per hour, like your new projects (new sales team, writing an ebook, testing new advertising methodsanything to create or increase revenue). I challenge everyone reading this to find out how you could trim the fat each week by cutting off 2-3 hours of your work week and assigning it to someone else. Then ask yourself what new project you could start, using your newly-saved time, and do the math. See for yourself how much more you could make by investing a little in others.
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