If I asked you which country was the most productive in the world, what would you say?
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Japan? America?
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Those were my answers, but they’re not even in the top 5.
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Every year, Expert Markets study the productivity of countries around the globe. Their measurement stick, however, isn’t hours worked per week.
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Rather, they calculate hours worked divided into income generated toward the country’s gross domestic product (GDP). In other words, how much dough the average citizen earns per hour of effort.
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Which makes sense.

When Medium curators distributed my article into the Productivity category, and when a publication called The Startup distributed that same article to over 500k subscribers, it reinforced my belief that Jon Morrow is the worlds top blogging expert.

If you don't know of Jon Morrow, he's the founder and chief writer on SmartBlogger.com, and he's wildly successful.

I read pretty much anything Jon Morrow writes, and buy pretty much anything he has to sell. Jon has proven to me, through countless blogs and paid courses, that he's the real deal.

His writing is spot on, his advice is practical and immediately useful, and he seems to know every pain point a writer like me faces in running a writing-based business.

So when he offered his Write a Kick-Ass Blog Post writing challenge in which he and his staff of pro bloggers would walk challengers through writing an article in one week for—get this—$10, purchasing it was a no-brainer.

Over 600 others thought the same.

We set out on a journey to write a list-post from scratch in 7 days. Every step of the way—from idea to outline to introduction to content to closing—Jon and his team read our work and gave us invaluable feedback.

Here are some of the best things I learned.

In 1905, Albert Einstein showed us that time, energy, mass, and speed are intertwined.

The faster you move, the more energy you need.

The faster you move, the slower time passes for you.

The faster you move, the more your mass increases.

Reaching maximum speed, the speed of light, would require an infinite amount of energy and would mind-bogglingly, for you, bring time to a halt.

His formula, E=mc^2 mathematically describes how these principles apply to our physical world. But the concepts ring true for our daily life too.

Bust your ass too hard, and you’ll fall into bed exhausted.

Bust your ass for too long, and seconds will feel like minutes.

Bust your ass for too hard and too long, and you’ll feel as though you need an infinite amount of energy to go on. The “weight” of your work will become unbearable. You’ll burn out, falling to ground zero (or below).

You don’t think of Einstein’s equation while at work, but you feel the ramifications of overdoing it. You know deep down which tasks suck your energy and which tasks recharge it. And you instinctively know when it’s time to call it a day.

As it turns out, these feelings are key to maintaining the intricate balance between Einsteins four variables—time, speed, mass, and energy—which in turn is the key to becoming maximally productive.

They finally got three outs.

After 45 minutes of disappointing hit after hit, the opponents’ pitcher finally ended the inning by picking off our third base runner.

The runner wasn’t upset.

Our team of 10 and 11-year-old boys had scored an impressive 15 runs in the bottom of the third inning completely dominating the opponent and going on to win by eight points.

Two things about this score were surprising:

One, we lost against the same team in a walk-off hit just an hour earlier.

And two, out of seventeen plays that inning, only one was a home run.

You are only as productive as your environment. So let’s get your main work environment, your office, as productive as possible.

Here are 19 tiny changes (with affiliate links to products that I’ve personally used to enhance my productivity) that can do exactly that. Try one, or try them all. The more changes, the more you’ll find you have the clarity, focus, time, and energy to work on what matters.