The secret to personal productivity

When we think of someone who is very productive, whose days seem to last 36 hours, we always imagine that they must know something that we don’t: a secret technique, a miraculous app, a new Kickstarter agenda for entrepreneurs…

However, personal productivity rarely has anything to do with any of these things.

I have been fortunate to meet very top, who have achieved a lot in their life, and really do not do anything special. They don’t know anything you don’t know.

All they do is work – and usually work a lot – on the right tasks.

And also do it consistently.

Day after day.

For example, Marcos Vázquez, the last guest on “Una vida a tu medida”, explains in episode #6 of the podcast the strategy he has followed to publish more than 200 articles, 7 books and 2 exercise programs in the last 4 years. for mobile, and if you stop to analyze it it is very simple.

First, Marcos has identified what are the most important tasks in his case. Not the ones he likes the most, nor the funniest, nor the most innovative… but the ones that will bring him closer to his financial and personal goals.

For him there are only two:

1. Publish quality articles every weekto attract new readers, retain existing ones and impact more people with your message
2. create new productsto generate income and help your readers implement their ideas

Then, once the main tasks are identified, Marcos makes sure that every day he dedicates some time to both.

Sometimes it’s 3 and 5 hours, other times it’s only 1 hour and 20 minutes… but he never goes to bed without having worked on the two key areas of his business.

And that’s it.

That is your strategy.

As you can see, it doesn’t require any secret technique or any magical application… but if you start doing the math, the numbers come out.

If every day (Monday to Friday) you write an average of 500 words for a post and 500 for a book, you can publish a post of 2,500 words a week and a book of more than 60,000 words every 6 months.

Just what Marcos does.

1,000 words a day.

1,000 words a day to create a revolution.

Couldn’t you do the same?

As a result of what I have just told you, I would like you to reflect for a few minutes on three very simple questions:

1. what do you want?
2. What are the must-dos that are going to get you there?
3. Are you spending time every day on those tasks?

Because if you are not getting the results you are looking for, it is probably because you are failing in one of these steps.

Perhaps you are not sure what you want to do with your life (in which case you should sign up for the waiting list for my course Find your waywhich I will release in January).

Maybe you don’t know what you have to do to get what you want (in which case you should read this post and also sign up for the waiting list for Find your way).

Or you may find yourself in the most common situation:

You know what you want and what you have to do to get it, but you’re not doing it every day.

And why aren’t you doing it?

Well, it could be for many reasons:

• You get carried away by the novelty instead of doing the right thing, something I talked about recently in this post
• You distract yourself with tasks that give you immediate gratification and a false sense of progress, but don’t get you closer to your goals. For example, participating in absurd discussions on Social Networks, looking for the perfect tool, or reading and reading without putting anything into practice.
• You do some of the fundamental tasks and ignore others. For example, you focus only on the short term (in Mark’s case, creating free content), but forget about the long term (in Mark’s case, creating and selling products that generate income for him).
• You do the essential tasks “once in a while”, but you are not consistent

I want to make special emphasis on this last point, on consistency, because as he says Chris Guillebeau“we overestimate what we can do in a day and underestimate what we can do in a year”.

For example, you may be very busy and in one day you only have time to write 1000 words, send 5 cold emails or run 3 kilometers.

And of course, at first glance, these results seem so small that it gives you the feeling that you are making so little progress that it is not worth doing those tasks.

In plan: “to run only 3 kilometers I don’t even put on my shoes.”

But the reality is that, if you are consistent and repeat these small actions every day, in 1 year you will have written 365,000 words (the equivalent of 6 thick books), you will have contacted 1,825 different people or companies (35% of the population of a town like Cudillero) or you will have run 1,095 kilometers (the equivalent of 26 marathons).

So you already know.

Stop looking for shortcuts, novelty, or immediate gratification, and instead focus on what’s important.

Work every day on the fundamental tasks that will bring you closer to the life you want, even if it is only for a few hours, and it is only a matter of time before you achieve your goal.

Math is on your side.