Secrets of Productive People

Speed reading (promo)

Book notes:

“Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort. (Paul J. Meyer)”

“There are of course many aspects to productivity. But I want to highlight the two elements that seem most essential to me: Creativity and Efficiency.”

“You can make a formula of them: Productivity = Creativity × Efficiency.”

“you can improve your productivity by improving either your creativity or your efficiency.”

“Creativity comes mainly from questioning the problem”

“Efficiency comes mainly from good processes consistently applied”

“The heart of efficiency is systems and processes.”

“Productivity is a persistent and consistent interaction between creativity and efficiency”

“We have seen that productivity is essentially a matter of bringing our creative ideas into fruition. Without creativity productivity is reduced to mere efficiency. Without bringing our creative ideas to fruition they remain just ideas, mere pipe dreams.”

“Ordinary people think merely of spending time, great people think of using it. (Arthur Schopenhauer)”

“‘Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.’ (Vincent van Gogh)”

" Even a small move in the right direction will make a lot of difference."

“The difference between productive people and unproductive people is very largely a matter of developing the right systems.”

“Systems come in a hierarchy. At the lowest level we have systems for the normal day-to-day activities which no one can avoid unless they are in the fortunate position of having plenty of servants or staff to do the work for them.”

“Good systems for simple administration will free your mind for more productive work. Ideally you shouldn’t need to have to think about the lower-level stuff at all.”

“Most techniques for overcoming procrastination are based on ‘little and often’.”

“Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money, but you cannot get more time. (Jim Rohn)”

“The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot. (Michael Altshuler)”

" another thing to watch out for is non-productive meetings. These are one of the biggest time killers in many work places."

“All meetings should be cost-effective in terms of the results that they generate.”

“For productive people, discretionary time is one of their most valuable resources.”

“The question is not whether something is high priority or low priority, but whether it should be done at all. (Mark Forster)”

“Much of the stress that people feel doesn’t come from having too much to do. It comes from not finishing what they’ve started. (David Allen)”

“One of the basic systems we need is how to manage our time.”

“To become a truly productive person, the first thing that you need to establish in your life is the ability to carry out repetitive activity.”

“Avoiding the possibility of failure is a way of cutting yourself off from a huge variety of learning experiences.”

“One of the very worst uses of time is to do something very well that need not be done at all. (Brian Tracy)”

“The effect of enforcing fixed breaks may surprise you.”

“Small disciplines repeated with consistency every day lead to great achievements gained slowly over time. (John C. Maxwell)”

“Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going. (Jim Rohn)”

“Pay someone else to do it: This is not always possible of course, especially if you are not in control of your own business. But to employ someone at a lower rate to do work which is preventing you from earning a higher rate is usually a good exchange.”

“Automate it: In this age of technology a lot of routine stuff which used to consume a lot of time can be entirely automated.”

“Time-limited projects are projects which have a definite end.”

" The main characteristic of a time limited project is that it can be scheduled."

“You can delegate authority, but you cannot delegate responsibility. (Byron Dorgan)”

“Whatever activities you are engaged in – whether they include sales, advertising, learning a language, learning a musical instrument, finance, running a team, writing a book or any others of the myriad activities that people get up to – it’s highly important to get feedback. If you don’t get feedback you are just running blind with no idea whether your actions are having the intended effect or not.”

“Asking questions is a major tool when you are talking to other people about a subject or when you are researching it. Important though it is to ask questions of other people, nevertheless the most important questions are the ones you ask yourself.”

" ‘Redundancy’ is an important concept in training. It means that you train to a higher standard than you are called on to use in most situations. That achieves two things. The first is that in normal situations you are only exercising a fraction of your skills and ability. The second is that when an emergency or exceptional situation occurs you can still respond to it within your capacity. An example of redundancy training is the training of airline pilots on simulators so that they are able to deal with a whole variety of emergency situations which they wouldn’t otherwise meet in a lifetime’s experience of flying."

“If you’ve got one message from this chapter, it should be that productivity is not only about work. Rest and recreation are essential parts of keeping yourself at maximum effectiveness. The brain is part of the body and everything that affects the body will also affect the brain.”

" The productive person certainly knows that you can’t make progress without hard work, but they also know that work comes naturally once you have the right system. So rather than put their attention on psyching themselves up to work harder, they concentrate on developing a better system."

“Skimming will help you to identify the parts of the book which you want to read more closely.”

“If two men on the same job agree all the time, then one is useless. If they disagree all the time, both are useless. (Darryl F. Zanuck)”

" Success does not come from sitting around trying to get into the right frame of mind – it comes from engaging with the project and working with it."

" productivity is not something you are born with, but is a learned activity. Like all learned activities it requires practice"

Best brain games (promo)