There is work, and there are results.
The two go hand-in-hand.
3 Simple Steps To Stay On Track When You’re In a Tired, Unmotivated Funk
Maybe it was just because it was Monday.
Maybe my weekend was too hectic.
Maybe it was because my kid woke me up three times: once to complain that he couldn’t sleep, once to tell me his stomach hurt, and another to puke.
Whatever it was, I stumbled out of bed feeling like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich marinated in a bag of Nickelodeon gak, trampled by a herd of bison, and left out in the sun to dry.
A glance at my calendar told me that I had more meetings than a millipede has legs giving me one and only one time to exercise, one and only one time to write an article, and zero times to take a seven-hour nap (which is the only thing I was contemplating doing).
Today was gearing up to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.
41 Ways to Get Home Early Every Day This Week
The Night Before
1. Get 7 hours of sleep
2. Lay out daily clothes in advance
3. Block calendar for important work
4. Schedule commute time
5. Schedule breaks
6. Plan to deal with time obstacles
7. Schedule administrivia
In The Morning
8. Exercise
9. Eat healthy food that energizes you
10. Tell everyone when you plan to leave
11. When work begins, begin work (don’t get distracted)
For Meetings
12. Squeeze meetings together
13. Focus (or leave) meetings that aren’t productive
14. Reschedule meetings that start late
15. Hold stand up meetings
16. Decline meetings where you can’t contribute
17. Add buffer between meetings and tasks
Managing Tasks
18. Schedule important tasks
19. Prioritize urgent tasks
20. Delegate unimportant tasks
21. Delete the rest of your tasks
22. Limit emailing to 3x per day
23. Automate repetitive tasks with apps like IFTTT
24. Bundle similar tasks together
25. Set a timer for your tasks
During Work
26. Begin with the end in mind
27. Minimize distractions
28. Stick to your schedule
29. Delegate
30. Work on what matters
31. Focus with music
32. Work intensely
33. Take breaks often
34. Work when everyone else isn’t
Administrivia
35. Call instead of email
36. Send shorter emails… get to the point
37. Only read emails where you are in the to: line
Before Heading Home
38. Block time before you leave to clean up your day
39. Reduce and remove clutter in your workspace
Don’t Forget…
40. Add some greenery to your workspace (scientifically proven to increase productivity)
41. Sit, stand, walk, talk, act confidently
About the Author
Michael Mehlberg
HUSBAND, FATHER, ENTREPRENEUR, BUSINESS STRATEGIST, AUTHOR, FITNESS NUT, ORGANIZATION FREAK, PRODUCTIVITY JUNKIE
I help high-achieving entrepreneurs organize their brain and schedule so they can organize their life and business.
Subscribe to my free, weekly newsletter on personal excellence and business mastery that one client called “The Owners Manual to an Awesome Life.”
So You Want to Be An Influencer? Consider This First...
It looks like “the good life,” doesn’t it?
The influencers life.
Wake up late, post a selfie next to your new Ferrari, then make money horsing around on social media with some trending product sent to you for free by some hot new company.
Cushy. Fun. Exciting.
Who wouldn’t want that life?
I sure have thought about it. About how to get it. More than once.
Everywhere you turn, influencers seem to dominate the online conversation. Youtube celebrities push funny new videos and receive thousands of likes per second. Instagram characters publish a new post and, before you know it, you’re swiping up on their latest story to buy what they’re pitching.
Though I have no fucking clue what he does, it’s not hard to see myself as the next PewDiePie. It’s not unreasonable to see any influencers success and believe that you can have it too.
And guess what? You can.
You have more opportunities than ever to become a massive, influencing success through dozens of online platforms that reach (quite literally) over 40% of the world’s population.
For the first time in history, you can get paid to promote a product that you’ve never used, developed by someone you’ve never met, sold by a company you can’t pronounce, and make a fortune doing it.
But this isn’t an article about how to do that.
What Matters
Work Hard, Overdeliver
It was a simple question.
“Grab my power drill from the tool chest, would ya?”
My son, Charlie, whose game of Fortnight I had interrupted, reluctantly left his computer and hustled to the garage to follow through on my request.
For context, I was at work in my basement, reinstalling an improperly installed…