Category Archives: Productivity

7 Challenges and Solutions to Productivity

There are 7 Challenges that I help people overcome and for each challenge I have a Key they use that contains Systems guaranteed to yield positive results. Here are each of the 7 Challenges with the related Key and the Results achieved by using my Key – plus an analysis of the Strengths and Weaknesses linked to each Key and how to achieve Balance:

Challenge #1: Uncertainty

Uncertainty is created when you are unclear about your life’s mission and how to live it through your whole life. You may be doing well in your personal life or in your work life but doing well in both areas (and in all sub-areas) can be elusive! You will struggle with a feeling of uncertainty when you don’t have every area of your life under control and you wish you were clear about what you need to do to make every area of your life fire on all cylinders.

The Key: When you are uncertain about your mission and how to live it through your whole life, you need to use Key #1: Live Your Mission and implement the mission management system to keep your mission in front of you and live it through all your Roles using Goals with scheduled Activities in a Weekly Planner.

The Results: Living Your Mission leads to increased clarity, motivation, job satisfaction, engagement, and a sense of direction, all of which contribute to higher personal productivity.

The Strength: The Strength behind Key 1 is Drive. When you excel at living your mission, you have every area of your life aligned with your mission statement and live through each of your Roles with great effectiveness. However, living in Hyper-Drive can be exhausting!

The Weakness: The Weakness behind Drive is Burnout – you can be so driven to get all areas of your life running at full speed with goals and activities that you struggle to take a break or escape for a season.

The Balance: When Burnout caused byDrive becomes a thief of productivity, you need to Revisit your Roles to make sure that you have a personal Role on your list that is given as much attention as the other Roles and that you work on your physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health while taking time for being and not just for doing.

Challenge #2: Overwhelm

Overwhelm is what you experience where you have so much to do that you honestly do not know where to start and feel like you are drowning in commitments and unfulfilled promises or desires. You will struggle with the challenge of overwhelm when you don’t know what to do to achieve your goals, or how to manage everything that is on your action lists. You may resonate with the phrase: “too much to do and not enough time to do it.”

The Key: When you feel overwhelmed and don’t know where to start with everything on your plate you need to use Key #2: Manage Your Actions and implement the action management system to know what needs to be done about stuff in your life that is important to you and track your actions in a system you trust.

The Results: Managing Your Actions fosters a sense of control, clarity, and purpose, ultimately leading to greater personal productivity and achievement.

The Strength: The Strength behind Key 2 is Activity. When you excel at managing your actions, you have a comprehensive system to manage all your commitments and perform with extreme efficiency. However, living with Hyper-Activity can be exhausting!

The Weakness: The Weakness behind Activity is Overwhelm – you can be so focused on creating lists and ticking things off that you generate more Tasks than you are able to handle.

The Balance: When Overwhelm caused byActivity becomes a thief of productivity, you need to Review your Tasks to make sure that you have a comprehensive workflow for managing actions so that every Task is interrogated to find out whether it is something you need to Do, Delegate, Defer, or Delete and you purge your lists as often as possible.

Challenge #3: Inconsistency

Inconsistency is what happens when we set goals but do not work on the strategy and systems that are needed to move us closer towards achieving our goals. We end up being erratic, always starting and stopping things that would help us advance in life. James Clear says that we don’t “rise to the level of our goals – we fall to the level of our systems”.

The Key: When you struggle to be consistent in any area of life, you need to use Key #3: Build Your Habits and implement the habit management system to build habits by making them Obvious, Easy, Attractive and Satisfying and track them to ensure they become habitual.

The Results: Building Your Habits boosts efficiency, strategic focus, time management, concentration, stress reduction, creativity, and overall well-being.

The Strength: The Strength behind Key 3 is Routine. When you excel at building your habits, you develop routines that boost your efficiency, reduce stress in your life, and increase your sense of well-being that leads to increased productivity. However, living with Excessive Routine can be exhausting!

The Weakness: The Weakness behind Routine is Rigidity – you can become overly focused on tracking your habits that you end up overwhelmed, stressed, and fatigued with so much you need to sustain.

The Balance: When Rigidity caused byRoutine becomes a thief of productivity, you need to Reduce your Habits to make sure that you are able to allocate time, attention, and energy to each one and get them automated by making them obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying.

Challenge #4: Busyness

Busyness may sound like something that is desirable and to be honest it does get rewarded in our world. However, it is not necessarily equated with productivity! If we are busy doing the wrong things then our efforts are a waste of time. Adam Grant says: “A busy life is not a symbol of status – it’s a symptom of trying to do too much for too many people.”

The Key: When you get too busy and can’t find time to do important things you need to use Key #14: Plan Your Time and implement the time management system to plan ahead, identify your priorities and create goals for all areas of your life.

The Results: Planning Your Time provides structure, clarity, and direction, which all lead to greater efficiency and goal attainment.

The Strength: The Strength behind Key 4 is Control. When you excel at planning your time, you create structure, clarity, and direction that helps you create the futures and achieve your goals. However, living with Extreme Control can be exhausting!

The Weakness: The Weakness behind Control is Micromanagement – you can become overly controlling of your time, tend towards workaholism, and miss out on opportunities that come from spontaneous happenings.

The Balance: When Micromanagement caused byControl becomes a thief of productivity, you need to Revamp your Calendar to make sure that you have enough preparation and processing time before and after events and set a limit on the number of appointments, meetings, or events that you add in a specific time frame.

Challenge #5: Distraction

Distraction happens when we allow things to distract us from important things we are doing. It is a serious challenge as it takes up to 23 minutes to regain our focus after we are distracted. Alexander Graham Bell said: “Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work in hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.”

The Key: When you find yourself distracted and unable to do what you set out to do you need to use Key #5: Focus Your Mind and implement the attention management system to live your passion, train your brain, and limit distractions.

The Results: Focussing Your Mind improving efficiency, reducing distractions, facilitating task completion, supporting decision-making, aiding time management, ensuring quality work, and fostering satisfaction.

The Strength: The Strength behind Key 5 is Hyperfocus. When you excel at focusing your mind, you improve efficiency, reduce distractions, improve work quality, and increase satisfaction. However, living with Constant Hyperfocus can be exhausting!

The Weakness: The Weakness behind Hyperfocus is Fixation – you can limit your ability to change priorities or address unexpected issues and neglect relationships.

The Balance: When Fixation caused by Hyperfocus becomes a thief of productivity, you need to Refocus your Attention to make sure that you know when to narrow your focus and when to broaden your focus to respond to all that is going on around you and the relationships that matter to you.

Challenge #6: Frustration

Frustration happens when you are not using your strengths to be productive and you end up feeling frustrated. When you don’t put enough emphasis on linking who you are with how you live and work you will end up frustrated because you are working against yourself. Partnering with yourself to be productive is critical as it leads to effectiveness in all areas of life!

The Key: When you become frustrated because you are working against who you are you need to use Key #6: Know Your Self and implement the self management system to accept who you are and only do what you are best at doing when you are at your best.

The Results: Knowing Your Self helps you optimise your strengths, manage your weaknesses, and navigate your personal challenges effectively.

The Strength: The Strength behind Key 6 is Excellence. When you excel at knowing yourself, you operate in the area of your strengths and accept work that matches your abilities, which helps you to get things done better, easily, and faster. However, living with High Excellence can be exhausting!

The Weakness: The Weakness behind Excellence is Perfectionism – you can become too focused on improving yourself, obsessed with flawlessness, which leads to procrastination and never satisfied with the quality of what you produce.

The Balance: When Perfectionism caused by Excellence becomes a thief of productivity, you need to Revise your Expectations to make sure that you know when your best is good enough, appreciate where you have come from, and give yourself grace when you fail to meet your expectations.

Challenge #7: Depletion

Depletion happens when you don’t work on renewing your energy and you end up depleted and unable to be productive. When you are depleted you don’t have the energy to show up and deliver what is needed in the moment. When you are drained you can do what is on your radar and this leads to overwhelm and inefficiency.

The Key: When you are too depleted to show up and deliver your best you need to use Key #7: Renew Your Energy and implement the energy management system to generate physical, emotional, mental and spiritual energy to help you live a Productive Life.

The Results: Renewing Your Energy promotes focus, motivation, clear thinking, physical stamina, resilience to stress, and creativity.

The Strength: The Strength behind Key 7 is Stamina. When you excel at renewing your energy, you improve your ability to focus, show up with greater motivation, think more clearly, and reduce levels of stress in your life. However, living with High Stamina can be exhausting!

The Weakness: The Weakness behind Stamina is Hyperactivity – you can become hyperactive and live on an adrenaline high, never slowing down long enough to live in the moment and unable to embrace rest and be refreshed.

The Balance: When Hyperactivity caused byStamina becomes a thief of productivity, you need to Release your Energy to make sure that you are not becoming hyperactive or making excessive errors due to frenetic activity but adjust the rate at which you generate and consume energy.

Live your Mission through KRAs with Goals!

My new book, The Productive Biz, has just been published and it includes a massive library of resources to help you implement the 7 Keys to Running a Productive Business. You can get your copy on Amazon today or start with a free Sample which is the whole of Key 1 with free resource in a Google Drive folder. Keep reading because this is not just a book promo but a chance to discover how to Live your Mission through KRAs with Goals!

At a Glance:

  • Learn how to Write Your Mission Statement using a 4-step outline that will make it easy to write and ensure it is comprehensive.
  • Learn how to Identify Your Key Result Areas using a 3-step process that will give you 6 critical areas to live our your mission.
  • Learn how to Create Your Goals for KRAs using the SMART goal framework or a super useful question to guide your thought process.

Living Your Mission Through KRAs with Goals

The first key to running a productive business is to Live Your Mission. Your Mission is lived through your Key Result Areas by achieving your Goals and Planning your business. This is about figuring out what your business is all about. And by business, I mean your whole business – not just what you do in some areas of the company, but in every area. For me, a productive business is one that creates a better future and that involves radical change both internally and externally.

1. Write Your Mission Statement

Creating a Productive Business starts with writing a mission statement to describe the kind of business you want to be and the difference you want to make in the world. During my training of thousands of leaders across the continent of Africa, I adopted a four-step process to writing a mission statement based on answers to four questions. As you work through the questions, be sure to complete each step of the process either with a pen or your keyboard.

Step 1: What must we BE to succeed? The first question forces you to start with your “being” rather than your “doing”. As you answer this question, think about the kind of business you want to run Choose a noun that describes what you want to be. Imagine the best version of your business. Keep it as short as possible – use a single word, or a hyphenated phrase or, at most, three or four words.

—> It’s Your Turn: Complete the sentence: Our Descriptive Noun is:

Step 2: What must we DO to succeed? The second question focusses on what you must do as a business to live out the noun you chose in the first question. Write down three ways in which you will impact people to bring change in the world using verbs – i.e., action or doing words.

—> It’s Your Turn: Complete the sentence: Our Verbs of Impact are:

Step 3: Who will we target? The third question is all about the different groups of people that your business will impact as you live your mission. Make sure that it is as broad as possible. Try and end up with 3 groupings of people that cover all your target groups.

—> It’s Your Turn: Complete the sentence: Our Target Groups to impact are:

Step 4: What will the result of our impact be? The final question deals with what you believe your impact will accomplish in the people you target. Here you are describing the change you want to see in your target audience.

—> It’s Your Turn: Complete the sentence: The Result of our impact will be:

The next part of this process is to move towards writing out your mission statement in one sentence using as few words as possible. Take the words or phrases you identified using the four questions and add them to the following sentence:

We are _____________________ (descriptive noun) who _____________, _____________, _____________ (verbs of impact) to _____________, _____________, _____________ (target groups) so ____________________________ (result of influence).

Now you are ready to write your mission statement in one sentence, memorise it, display it and connect with it every day as you run your business.

—> It’s Your Turn: Complete the sentence: Our Mission is…

Well done if you followed my process so far – you have a clearly written and powerful mission statement to direct your focus as a business owner or leader. Now it is time to take the next steps…

2. Identify Your Key Result Areas

The second step to living your mission is to identify the Key Result Areas (KRAs) through which you will live your mission. Your Key Result Areas are the areas you must focus on and track to achieve our mission. Here are 3 steps to take to identify your Key Result areas:

Step 1: List Possible Areas To Focus On. Do a brainstorm of all possible areas that are important to your business. Consider your product, staff, customers, revenue, processes, etc.

—> It’s Your Turn: Complete the sentence: Our Possible Areas are:

Step 2: Select Six Areas To Focus On. This step will give you a manageable set of Areas to focus on as you live out your mission. Go back to the list of possible KRAs in Step 1 and narrow the list down to no more than 6 key areas you need t focus on to be successful as a business – make sure they cover your whole business.

—> It’s Your Turn: Complete the sentence: Our 6 Key Result Areas are:

Step 3: Write Descriptive Statements For Each KRA. The descriptive statement describes the condition we must reach for each Key Result Area to be considered operational and working well.

—> It’s Your Turn: Complete the sentence: Our 6 Key Result Areas are described as:

In my book I also describe how you should do a SWOT analysis on each KRA, identify critical issues for each KRA and create an action plan for each KRA. The Sample Chapter will walk you through these additional steps and it will also give you sample statements, KRAs and Goals from three different businesses!

3. Create Your Goals for KRAS

The third step to live your mission is to create your goals. Now that you have defined the KRAs you will focus on for your business you need to create goals for each KRA. You could use the SMART goal approach and create goals that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely or you can create goals by asking yourself: “What is the most important thing we could do this week to have the greatest positive impact on this KRA.” While many goals may come to mind, you should limit yourself to just a few important goals for each KRA. With your mission statement in mind, look over the work done in Step 2 for each KRA and create 2 goals for each key area.

—> It’s Your Turn: Complete the sentence: Our Goals for our 6 Key Result Areas are:

Note: This is an excerpt from my new book, The Productive Biz.

My book includes a Bonus Step which is to Work your Plan using a Business Planner that has 8 sections: Mission, KRAs, Goals, Priorities, Projects, Tasks, People and Habits so you can track your progress.

Order My Book for More Like This!

The Productive Biz is filled with practical tools to shape and run your business using 7 Keys that defeat the 7 Giants stealing your productivity (visit the book’s website to meet the giants). Each of the keys contains proven strategies, with clear steps to take to implement them, plus a set of resources in a Google Drive folder to make it all work in your world.

Here is what you get:

1 Book: around 60 pages in A4 format if printed out.

1 Workbook: a fully interactive journey for screens or pens.

1 Folder: a Google Drive folder with 69 assets to add endless value.

9 PowerPoint Presentations: one for each key and the intro and outro too.

Get it with all these Bonuses for just $9.99 on Amazon as an eBook!

BUY NOW!

I believe that this process for developing and living your mission will be of great help to you and that you will invest in your future by buying a copy of my book!

Oh, you should definitely consider working with me this year! Let me be your productivity coach in your personal life or your business life! I am not cheap but affordable and can promise results based on testimonies from over 100 clients. Click HERE to book a free discovery call with me and we can talk about my 9-week coaching journey and see how we can make it happen. Act today and cast a vote for the kind of person you want to be!

The 3 One Things Newsletter

My name is Mark Tittley and I have spent decades pursuing productivity in my WHOLE life. I have trained and coached people across the globe in productivity and I send out a weekly Newsletter to help people live a Productive Life. Each newsletter contains 3 One Things that I have either Read, Done or Created that have helped me be more productive. 

Click HERE to sign up for the newsletter.

Download Past Issues HERE.

Living a Productive Life (Part 10)

Over the past seven weeks I have explored each of the 7 keys to living a productive life from my book, The Productive Life. As I wrap up this series of messages, let me suggest a few things that could sabotage your efforts at living a Productive Life and remind you of what we covered:

* Struggling with Guilt. Many people feel guilty when they are not working a hundred-hour week. For many years I was a recovering workaholic. I was the worst possible taskmaster and I kept driving myself to work non-stop – even when I was supposed to be off. Thankfully, maturity and a desire to live a truly Productive Life have helped me leave that way of thinking and living behind. Maybe you are in a different place in your career and don’t yet feel the need to balance your life. Hopefully you will learn from others who have gone before you and learn to pace yourself and pay attention to all areas of your life. When you work, work hard and smart, but when you rest, rest well!!! Make sure you implemented the strategies you learnt in Key #1: Live Your Mission.

* Dealing with Overwhelm. My wife and I have a blackboard in our kitchen where we write motivational quotes for each week. Last week we chose to use a quote from the Productivity Paradox Podcast by Tonya Dalton: “Overwhelm is not having too much to do – it is not knowing where to start.” This book should have given you practical tools and strategies to know what action to take in any moment as we explored in Key #2: Manage Your Actions.

* Battling with Habits. My daughter, Ashley, often speaks of how our bodies have muscle memory and the negative effects that can have on our efforts to get or keep fit. Our minds have something similar going on and we will need to work consistently at the new ideas and habits that we are developing to overcome old ways of thinking and living. Don’t forget we referenced research that suggested that we need to repeat an action for at least 66 days before it become a habit. You may need to revisit Key #3: Build Your Habits to refine your best practices around mastering good habits.

* Neglecting Key Areas. Maybe you are doing well in some areas of your life but you are really struggling in other areas. Remember we have been talking about the Productive Life and not just the Productive Employee. It may be helpful to revisit Key #4: Plan Your Time where you learnt to include a wide variety of life areas in your planning to set and achieve your goals.

* Getting Easily Distracted. The world is not going to suddenly stop shouting for your attention. You won’t wake up tomorrow with no messages or demands for you to respond. You will need to continually revisit Key #5: Focus Your Mind and keep working on avoiding distractions.

* Fighting Your Nature. If you don’t appreciate how you have been wired and spend too much time trying to overcome your natural strengths and tendencies you will end up being frustrated because you have spent too much time trying to change who you have been uniquely created to be. If this become an issue then Key #6: Know Your Self could be the game changer you have been looking for as you embrace who you are and work with yourself rather than against yourself.

* Running on Empty. If one day you remember your good intentions to live a Productive Life but you find yourself thinking: “I just don’t have the energy to show up and deliver anything today” then it would be time to revisit Key #7: Renew Your Energy and do things that will generate the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual energy you need to live a Productive Life.

I trust that you have benefited from this series and have either invested in a copy of my book or have an intention to do so! As I mentioned in a previous message, if you honestly can’t afford to purchase a copy, then send me a direct message and I will send you a digital copy for free!

Here are some places where you can purchase a copy if you are able to:

Amazon (http://bit.ly/TPLBOOK) – eBook and Paperback for global shipping.

Takealot (http://bit.ly/TPL_Takealot) – Paperback for South Africa shipping.

Living a Productive Life (Part 9)

I trust you have been enjoying this series exploring the 7 Keys for Living a Productive Life from my book: The Productive Life. In this message I am going to give you an extract from my book where I explored explored Key #7: Renew Your Energy.

In this Key I wrote about four kinds of energy that we need to renew: Physical; Mental; Emotional and Spiritual. Here is what I wrote about the first two kinds of energy:

1. Generate Physical Energy
The first step to renew your energy is to generate physical energy. I have learnt that how we live our lives will determine whether we show up with energy or drag ourselves through each day hoping for a weekend or public holiday where we can recharge before the next stretch.

Here are some things you can do to generate physical energy:

  • Health: It all starts with eating well and even if you don’t go overboard but eat healthy foods and avoid harmful foods you will have more energy.
  • Exercise: You don’t have to be a fitness fanatic who works out two times a day, although that may be your thing, but even if you just keep moving and walk a few kilometres every day, like my wife and I do every day, you will generate energy to release.
  • Sleep: I have had seasons in my life when I worked late into the night and had to drag myself out of bed in the morning not ready to face the day. Make it a regular habit to get seven to eight hours of sleep a night and you will have more energy!
  • Rest: I have numerous practices around rest that help me to generate energy, including: (1) Guarding my work rhythms by only working two thirds of the day and very rarely three thirds; (2) Taking a day off each week; (3) Taking a weekend off every two months; (4) Taking three weeks of continuous leave over my annual holiday period, and (5) Taking a three-month Sabbatical every seven years.

Be Productive Right Now!

  1. What one thing can you do to generate physical energy?
  2. Set one goal for each of the following areas:
  • Health:
  • Exercise:
  • Sleep:
  • Rest:

2. Generate Emotional Energy
The second step to renew your energy is to generate emotional energy. In recent years, as I have begun to understand how my brain works, I have realised that managing my feelings is a truly critical part of living with energy. I think positively and when I find myself tempted to have a pity-party or complain or give in to negative thoughts, I make a conscious effort to return to a place of positivity and without fail my mood starts to move from negative to positive.

I am not pretending that it is not a huge challenge at times, like when I received news about eye conditions that could have resulted in eye loss, but here is what I do know: (1) I can’t control everything that happens to me; (2) I can control how I react to what life throws at me; and (3) I can become better because of what I go through.

Here are some things you can do to generate emotional energy:

  • Embrace Positive Thinking: I explored this concept in some details in the Focus key so I won’t repeat myself here apart from reminding you that thoughts matter and that they build mindsets – so think positively and build mindsets that will lead you to productivity and success.
  • Avoid Negative Thinking: When you catch yourself thinking negatively, stop and reject the negative thought and replace it with a positive thought.
  • Embrace Positive People: Go out of your way to spend time with positive people so their positive energy can rub off on you. Energy is infectious!
  • Avoid Negative People: This may sound a little harsh, and obviously you can’t totally avoid people, but move away from people who have the potential to steal your positivity.

Be Productive Right Now!

  1. What one thing can you do to generate emotional energy?
  2. What can you do to replace negative thoughts with positive thoughts?

Challenge:
Make it your intention to show up with energy, take time to prepare for every opportunity you get to engage with people, prepare as if you were a gladiator preparing to enter an arena, and just maybe it will end up being your finest hour – as reflected in the words of Sir Winston Churchill during the second world war: “To every man there comes in his lifetime that special moment when he is figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered a chance to do a very special thing, unique to him and fitted to his talents. What a tragedy if that moment finds him unprepared or unqualified for the work which would be his finest hour.” (The Transparent Leader II by Dwight L. Johnson).

In my next message I will pull things together as I wrap up this series exploring each of the 7 Keys to Living a Productive Life.

Don’t forget you can buy a copy of the book in various formats and places:
Amazon (http://bit.ly/TPLBOOK) – eBook and Paperback for global shipping.
Takealot (bit.ly/TPL_Takealot) – the paperback for shipping in South Africa.

Living a Productive Life (Part 8)

I trust you have been enjoying this series exploring the 7 Keys for Living a Productive Life from my book: The Productive Life. In this post I am going to explore Key #6: Know Your Self.

In this chapter of my book I explore five steps you can take to know your self to help you increase your productivity. The steps are:
(1) Discover Your Uniqueness from Tests.
(2) Learn How to Do a Self-Assessment.
(3) Develop a Personal Profile Document.
(4) Apply Your Findings to Productivity.
(5) Keep Learning About Yourself.

If you know me fairly well, you will know that not only have I taken just about every possible personality or productivity test that has been created, but that I keep a very detailed document that contains the results of every test and other personal insights that I have gathered over the years. When you work through this Key in my book, I will point you in the right direction so that you can start something similar and also give you a template which will have all the links that you need to get started.

While training young couples who are approaching marriage I developed a way in which you can self-score yourself on the DiSC personality test and I have even applied it to help you figure out which Tendency you are (that is the test that Gretchen Rubin uses – you can take her test online at: http://bit.ly/Test_Tendencies), however, if you want my tool you are going to have to sacrifice something this month and purchase a copy of my book!!!

Let me leave you with an extract from this chapter of my book: “As far as I can remember, the first quotation I ever memorised was: ‘Know Thyself’. It has a somewhat disputed origin with some suggesting that it be attributed to Socrates. The story goes that In Ancient Greece, the philosopher Socrates said that the unexamined life was not worth living and when asked how he would sum up all the philosophical commandments, he replied: “Know thyself.” No matter who said it, the idea of getting to know yourself is a critical part of living a Productive Life. Until we actually understand who we are, how we are wired and what makes us do the things that we do, we won’t actually be able to consistently live life in a way that is personally satisfying or meaningful to others.”

In the next message I will explore the final key to productive living: Renew Your Energy!

Your productivity coach

Mark

Living a Productive Life (Part 7)

It has been a great journey so far as we have explored the first 4 of 7 Keys for Living a Productive Life from my book: The Productive Life. In this message I am going to explore Key #5: Focus Your Mind.

How is your eyesight? In my younger days, I never appreciated how critical clear vision is until I started struggling to read in low light and, over the last decade, started to struggle with seeing stuff in the distance clearly. As an avid birdwatcher, who is on a quest to photograph every single bird species in Southern Africa (I have snapped 717 and have under 300 to still find and photograph), I know that good eye sight and the ability to focus is critical. The last 9 months have been rather hectic – an eye disease caused bleeding in my eye balls which forced me to have a surgery (known as a vitrectomy where the fluid is extracted and replaced and the retina is lasered back into place) and then as a side-effect I developed cataracts. I think I am somewhat qualified to talk about the importance of Focus!

Everywhere you turn these days you hear stuff about neuroscience. My wife and I have just started a Udemy course called SuperLearner 2 and we are so excited about going deeper with memory insights and boosting our reading speeds and comprehension rates.

This Key is epic and, if I can say so myself as the author, it is a cracker of a chapter. I actually believe that Attention Management is as important as, if not more important than, Time Management! The ability to control our focus is critical. Paul J. Meyer said: “Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort” and part of the opening quote for this chapter is from Tanya Dalton: “Productivity is focusing on what matters most.” This Key will help you take control of your mind and enable you to do your best work in every area of your life as you learn the 3 Secrets to Focusing Your Mind:

1. Live Your Passion: Focus starts with doing stuff that we are passionate about. When I am working on something that I am passionate about, just about nothing can distract me!!! I am really excited to share a tool with you that will help you discover your passion in life – I call it the Passion Indicator. It is based on a set of questions that help you discover your passion and write it out. One of the six questions in the Indicator is: “What activities leave you energised but not drained?” When you work in the area of your passion you will be refreshed and not depleted!!! If I were you, I would buy the book just to get access to the Passion Indicator.

2. Train Your Brain: Dr. Amber Selking, a performance coach from the US, gave me permission to include an overview of what will be a book launched within the next year on Building Championship Mindsets. She writes about 7 building blocks for building a championship mindset and her fifth building block is Attention Control. I have recommended her podcast for this Key and you should consider subscribing even if you are still to buy my book. It is called: Building Championship Mindsets. There are also insights from the field of neuroscience in this secret from writers like John Assaraf, Dr Caroline Leaf and you should definitely subscribe to the podcast by Jim Kwik entitled: Kwik Brain.

3. Limit Your Distractions: The third secret to focus your mind is to limit distractions. You can’t have your phone distracting you every time an email or social media message pops up because it takes from 7 to 20 minutes to refocus every time you are distracted!!! Scary, right? I have a reputation of always responding to people who message me, but honestly, I do it in a way that does not cause me to lose my focus when I am working!!!

How are you doing with focus? Do you need some help in this area? Grab a copy of my book and invest in your development using this link: http://bit.ly/TPLBOOK. You can also get a free chapter using this link: https://bit.ly/TPLSampleChapter

In the next message I will explore Key #6: Know Your Self which will help you learn how to work with who you are to become productive! After all, stress-free productivity is what we are after!

Your productivity coach

Mark

Living a Productive Life (Part 6)

I trust you have been enjoying this series exploring the 7 Keys for Living a Productive Life from my book: The Productive Life. In this message I am going to cover Key #4: Plan Your Time.

Let me give you a detailed overview of what I have included in this chapter of my book as I unpack some best practices around planning your time. There are 4 tools that will help you become productive as you plan your time:

1. Use a Planner: A productivity planner is a game changer when it comes to planning your year, month, week and day and to prove just how serious I am about using a planner I have actually spent the last six month working on one that is aligned with the 7 keys and that will help you get on top of your life. It is currently available as a free printable download for anyone who buys my book. Here are images of the main pages:

2. Plan in Advance: There are countless benefits to sitting down and planning what you are going to do (whether it is in the next hour, day, week, month, year or decade) and a good productivity planner will help you do the kind of advanced planning that will jumpstart your productivity. One of the things that I do every day, using my planner, is setting aside fifteen minutes every night to plan my major priorities, projects and tasks for the next day so that by the time my day starts I know exactly where I am going and I am less distracted and spin my wheels a whole lot less as I gain traction with my day! If you look at the first image under the last point you will see that the shaded part of the page (the T-shape) is what you complete the night before so you are ready for the day before it arrives!

3. Create Your Goals: I am going to introduce you to a fantastic tool that was created by the guys who released The ONE Thing book called the GPS Goal Planning Template. I have a Word version that is available as a download with the book which helps you create a Goal for each Life Area, then you set 3 Priorities for each goal; then design 5 Strategies for each priority and finally you choose a Deadline for each of the 5 Strategies. Here is what the GPS Planner looks like:

4. Schedule Your Goals: Who says that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks? Earlier this year I learnt how to use my calendar as a secret weapon to ensure that I move towards reaching my goals. Not only did it fast track my efforts at creating a leadership pipeline for the organization I am working in, and help me create a brand new daily morning routine, but it also got my book written and released. Clearly it is a game changer!!!

Okay, so I am a little excited about this Key and believe that it will change your life. I don’t quite know what to give you to get you going, other than to seriously urge you to consider making the investment in yourself by buying a copy of my book and working through it. You won’t be sorry for stretched yourself financially because of the return you will get for your investment. What price would you put on creating a life that is firing on all cylinders? Whatever value you come up with, do the math and if my book on Amazon – at around $10 – is less than 10% of that figure – then you would be crazy not to make the investment!!! Get it with this link: http://bit.ly/TPLBOOK

In the next message I will explore Key #5: Focus Your Mind. If you think I am excited about Key #4 – just wait until next time!!!

Your productivity coach

Mark

Living a Productive Life (Part 5)

I trust you have been enjoying this series exploring the 7 Keys for Living a Productive Life. I thrive on being able to share what I know with others and am loving being able to share with you what I have unpacked in my book, The Productive Life. In this message, I am going to cover Key #3: Build Your Habits.

If you are like me, you have as many, if not more, negative than positive thoughts that come to mind when you hear the word “habits”. Yet, when it comes to productivity I believe that habits are a massive game changer because they turn goals into reality.

For years I had a Mission statement that was lived through my Roles which had Goals and related Activities (this was the subject of my last message) but until I started building Habits around my goals, the effects were nowhere near where they could have been. As I created habits for each one of my goals the effect on my life was exponential.

For example, I have a Priority in my life to engage with God and a Goal of spending quality time in devotions every day. What helped this goal become a consistent reality in my life was creating the Habit of getting up at 5am every day and spending the next hour in devotions where I mediate, read Scripture, pray and record the spontaneous flow of thoughts that come to mind. No longer am I hoping to do this – it has become a habit and it happens! In fact, adding it to my Morning Habit Stack, that includes a number of other habits that happen one after each other, has ensured that I don’t miss a day! Of course, I can choose to delay the start of the habit but because there is a sequence of events that take place – it happens. This is what I will teach you to do in this chapter of my book!

My wife and I listened to an episode of the Kwik Brain podcast on our bird watching outing on Monday. This is our favourite podcast at the moment and not one that I mentioned in my book. It is by Jim Kwik and is all about understanding your brain and training your memory. It is more of a masterclass than a podcast and you should consider subscribing to it. Anyway, Jim interviewed the author of a new book entitled Wild Habits. In her book, Tara Mackey says that for habits to be successful they need four features (based on the word WILD): (1) Willingness: we must accept that something is not working and be willing to change; (2) Intuition: we must figure out what the next step is, take it and see where it leads us; (3) Love: we need to have the self-love to take the necessary step; and (4) Discipline: we need the discipline to take the step every day until it becomes a new habit.

Be Productive Now:
Here is an exercise you can do right now to help you with habit building:

  1. What is one goal that you are struggling to achieve at the moment?
  2. Think of a habit that you can start to help that goal become more attainable – it could be a really small action that take each day (James Clear speaks about Atomic Habits and Dr BJ Fogg speaks about Tiny Habits.)
  3. Start practicing the habit and use your calendar to help you remember to actually do it.

If you have not downloaded the sample chapter from my book on Building Habits – then you can use this link to get the Free Chapter.

If you have not done so already, grab a copy of my book on Amazon today (http://bit.ly/TPLBOOK) and get printable versions of the Workbook and the Productive Life Planner for free using the link to the Resource Folder available in the book!

In my next message I will explore Key #4: Plan Your Time. I trust you are starting to see how the keys build on each other.

Your productivity coach

Mark Tittley

Living a Productive Life (Part 4)

Welcome to another stage in The Productive Life journey. Today I am going to explore Key #2: Manage Your Actions.

About a decade ago I got a print copy of David Allen’s book, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. I could not put it down. I thought I was being productive before this stage of my productivity adventure started but I knew there was still the occasional thing that I was letting slip through the cracks and it drove me crazy! I really do not like disappointing people (after all, I am an Upholder on Gretchen Rubin’s Four Tendencies model – you can take the test for free here: bit.ly/Test_Tendencies).

The biggest win for me in reading and implementing David Allen’s book and creating an action management system was developing the habit of capturing EVERYTHING that I commit to do, or need to do. I am sure you often have people asking you to do things for them and you promise to do it but then it slips your mind because you bump into someone else who has their own requests and then other stuff comes your way and before you realise it, you have forgotten what you promised to do!

The value of Getting Things Done (GTD for short) is that you commit to doing something right away if it will take you less than 2 minutes to do (this is The 2 Minute Rule) or you capture it in your action management system that is out of your head and you don’t forget to do it. You can use paper or an app, I know what I would do without the app that I use as a Capture Device which is called Nirvana. In fact, I am never more than a few second away from a capture device. This is actually just the first of five steps of the GTD Workflow Model that I introduce in this chapter of my book.

When you buy my book, you will be given access to a folder of resources and one of the documents contains all the GTD Templates that I have created that has earned me the reputation of being a machine when it comes to getting things done. Honestly, I am no rocket scientist but I have a system that makes me productive! Discovering a system like this will literally change your whole life. No one needs to remind me of things I promise to do because my system reminds me and honestly, I sleep so much better at night because my mind does not have to keep waking me up to remind me of stuff I need to do. I use my mind to help me be creative and create systems for people or things that need to be improved – not to remember stuff.

How are you doing in this area? Do you get into trouble for not getting things done? Maybe you feel a little like this sometimes…

It may cost you a little to invest in my book, but I can guarantee that you will reap the reward as you become known as the person who gets things done and you will no longer get into trouble with your family, friends or colleagues for stuff you don’t get done! You will learn how to manage your actions as you work through this chapter of my book!

In my next message we will explore Key #3: Build Your Habits and I will help you learn how to keep good habits and break bad habits!

Your Productivity Coach

Mark Tittley