“How To Prioritize My Work” – Wake Up Productive by Eben Pagan

How do I prioritize my work? Hi, I’m Eben Pagan, creator of the Wake Up Productive time management and productivity training program. If you’d like to watch my 47-minute video on how to manage yourself and your time and become dramatically more productive, just go to WakeUpProductive.com, and enter your name and email address. You can watch this video worth $100.00 for free.

Let’s talk about how to prioritize our work to get the right things done and to become very productive. One of the things that I’ve learned in business is that there are only a few things that matter. If you only worked on those few things, you would get very, very strong, very, very profitable results. If you don’t do those few things, then you’re going to get horrible results. Now, because most of us are distracted, and we’re interrupted, and we’ve got a lot of things on our minds, and we’ve got a big list of To Dos, it’s sometimes not easy to remember to just take a minute and ask, “What are the important things?” When we do take a minute to ask, “What are the important things?” sometimes, we don’t have tools that allow us to value the different things on the list and to get the important things to the top. I’m going to give you a couple of tools right now.

The first tool is what I call my productivity pyramid. The simple way to use this tool is to start, take a blank piece of paper, and draw a triangle or a pyramid, and break it into four levels. The bottom level – inside of the bottom level, write, “Zero value or negative value.” The second level, write, “Low dollar per hour activities.” The next level up or the second level from the top, label that, “High dollar per hour activities.” Then, the top, the capstone of the pyramid, that’s, “High lifetime value activities.”

Now, zero value or negative value, these are things that you do that literally have no value or they may have negative value. These would be things like gossiping or complaining or eating junk food because you feel like you have low energy. They’re things that actually bring no value or possible they’re counterproductive. They have negative value.

The second level, which is low dollar per hour activities, this would be all of the administrative work that you do. Like if you’re mailing out several pieces of mail: if you’re writing the address and putting the stamps on the envelope and bringing them to the post office. This is low dollar per hour activity. This might be $10.00 or $20.00 per hour activities.

The next level, which is high dollar per hour activities, this is where it starts to get really interesting because this is where you’re doing things that are actually creating results very quickly that bring in money or bring in value to you and your business. A typical example might be talking to a customer who’s interested in buying something from you. That would be maybe considered a sales call or a sales conversation because if it results in a sale or a customer buying something, that brings in a lot of money right now.

Now, at the pinnacle or the capstone, this is high lifetime value activities. These are actually the most valuable activities that you can do. As it turns out, they’re the things that we usually don’t do because they’re not that urgent. Stephen Covey, in his four-quadrant time management system, he talks about these. These are really part of the Quadrant 2 – things that are important, but they’re not really urgent. Things that if you do them consistently over time, they build a lot of value. They build a big foundation for value creation and income, but because they’re long-term projects, and they require a lot of investment, we don’t get around to them.

In our personal lives, things like exercise and creating a diet plan that really works. These are high lifetime value activities. They pay dividends for life. In the business sphere, some of the high lifetime value activities would be creating a new product or a new service that’s going to be sold over and over and over again. Another high lifetime value activity might be creating a marketing piece or something that you’re going to give away to customers to entice them and get them to check out your business. This video right here is a high lifetime value activity for me because thousands and thousands of people will watch this over the coming years. They’ll learn about my products and services, and they will come and visit me. It has high lifetime value.

What I’d like you do is make a pyramid for yourself, and list out the things that you do every day, all the typical things that you do. What are the things that have zero or negative value? What are the things that have low dollar per hour value? What are the things that have high dollar per hour value? And then, what are the things that have high lifetime value? And just by looking at them, by seeing them and understanding their relationship to each other, that’ll create some awareness, and it’ll have a click, and it’ll let you know which things to prioritize at the top of the list every day because those are the things that bring you high lifetime value and high dollar per hour value.

Now, the next thing I’d like to teach you is a concept that took me a long time to realize. In business, there are only three things that really ring the cash register, increase the value of your business, create value for others and actually make you a lot of money long term. Those three things are products, marketing and relationships. Let me say them again. Products, marketing and relationships. These are big categories, and obviously, a lot more than just products fits in the products bin because it can be products, it can be services. It can be an integration of the two. Things that you’re going to sell are what I’m talking about. Marketing is all of the marketing and sales activities that you do. Things to bring in customers, and maybe you might consider good customer service in there because in a lot of ways, good customer service is good marketing.

And then relationships. Relationships with partners, people who would like to sell your stuff for you, employees, team members, people that work with you, that type of thing. Here’s what I’ll tell you. If you want to have a dramatically more successful business and dramatically more successful life and make a lot more money in a lot less time, invest 80 percent of your time working on products, marketing and relationships. Products, marketing and relationships. If you just prioritize products, marketing and relationships to the top of your list every day, you will wake up three months, six months, nine months, twelve months from now, and your productivity and your income will be skyrocketing. So those are a couple of great tools and ideas for prioritizing your work and your life.

Finally, if you’d like to learn how to really master time management and productivity, learn how to keep yourself focused, learn how to eliminate procrastination for good and learn how to create positive habits and eliminate negative ones, just go to WakeUpProductive.com right now to watch my 47-minute video on how to manage yourself and your time and how to make yourself dramatically more productive.

The video is worth $100.00, but you can watch it for free by just visiting WakeUpProductive.com, entering your name and e-mail address and opting in. Of course, I’ll also send you many more valuable free video trainings, and I’ll also send you private invitations to listen to me interviewing some of the top experts in the world on business, marketing, success and productivity all for free.

Just go to WakeUpProductive.com, enter your name and e-mail address to get it all right now.

“Task Management – How To Decide What Task To Do First” – Wake Up Productive by Eben Pagan

How do I decide what to work on first?  Hi, I’m Eben Pagan, creator of the Wake Up Productive Time Management and Productivity Training Program.  If you’d like to watch my 47-minute video on how to manage yourself and your time and become dramatically more productive, just go to WakeUpProductive.com and enter your name and e-mail address, and you can watch this video worth $100.00 for free.

So here is how to decide what to work on first.  I’m going to give you two techniques, two different approaches, and I actually use both of them.  The first approach is the most intuitive, the most logical. And this is the simple approach of figuring out what’s most valuable.  Often times, it’s not easy to weigh two things against each other and figure out which one is going to be more valuable.  Sometimes I’ll actually just try to figure out which is more valuable by asking how much money will it be worth.  Now I don’t like to idolize money or turn money into God, but sometimes, it’s a great little measuring stick or measuring tool.  So let’s say I have two things that I could do.  One of them is I know I’ve got a bunch of e-mails that I need to answer, and another one is I know I need to create a sales letter because I’m launching a product.  If I look at these two things and ask myself, “Okay, who are the e-mails likely to be from?  What’s the value of the e-mails?  If I answer all those e-mails, how much money will that actually wind up making?”

Versus if I create this sales letter that’s going to sell a bunch of my products, how much value will that create?  And on the e-mails, I might estimate, “You know what?  If I answer all those e-mails, it’s probably going to be worth like $50.00, where as if I create this sales letter, it’s going to lead to the sales of thousands or tens of thousands, or probably more; probably hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of products. Clearly, doing this sales letter is more important.”

Now you have to deal with the competition between things that are urgent and things that are important, as Stephen Covey likes to talk about.  But once you can really get a beat on the value of things, and you can challenge yourself and ask, “Okay, if I had to guess, how much money would this thing be worth if I get it done?”  Then it’ll quickly show you which things are more important.  So the first technique: just put a value next to it.  Put a dollar value.  How much will it be worth if you get that thing done?  Then put the highest value thing at the top.  Now the other technique is actually counter-intuitive, but it can be very valuable.  And this is usually handy where you’ve got a list of a bunch of different things that you have to do, and you want to make sure that you get all of them done.

And again, this works when you’ve got a lot of things.  They might not be big projects.  They’re just kind of a punch list of things to do.  What you do is you take the thing you don’t want to do most, the thing that is going to suck, and you put it first.  Then you put the second worst thing second and the third worst thing third.  And let’s say you have a list of ten things.  By five or six, you’re getting into things that you kind of like doing and enjoy, and you want to take the best thing, the most enjoyable, the most fun thing to do, and put it last.  Now the logic here is that if you make your list in reverse order of the things that suck the most, the things that are going to be the hardest to do, the least fun, that you’re going to plow through those things because you’re going to want to get them out of the way, and you’re going to want to get to the thing you really enjoy doing the most.

So take these two techniques and try them out right now.  Make a list of all the things that you need to get done right now, and then next to each of them, write down the dollar value.  If you get the thing done, how much will it be worth to you in money?  Just estimate.  Then take the thing that’s worth the most and put at the top and do that one first.  That will dramatically increase your productivity and your results.  Next, take the list of things and put them in order from the worst thing, the thing you’re going to not enjoy the most, all the way to the best thing.  The thing that will be the most fun, and then get to work.  So try these two techniques.  They both work great.  I use both of them.  Try them out, and let me know how they work for you.

And finally, if you’d like to learn how to really master time management and productivity, learn to keep yourself focused, learn how to eliminate procrastination for good, and learn how to create positive habits and eliminate negative ones, just go to WakeUpProductive.com right now to watch my 47-minute video on how to manage yourself and your time and how to make yourself dramatically more productive.  The video is worth $100.00, but you can watch it for free by just visiting WakeUpProductive.com, entering your name and e-mail address and opting in. Of course, I’ll also send you many more valuable free video trainings, and I’ll also send you private invitations to listen to me interviewing some of the top experts from the world on business, marketing, success, and productivity all for free.

Just go to WakeUpProductive.com.  Enter your name and e-mail address to get it all right now.

“How Do I Prevent Distractions And Interruptions?” – Wake Up Productive by Eben Pagan

How do I prevent distractions and interruptions? Hi, I’m Eben Pagan, creator of the Wake Up Productive time management and productivity training program. If you’d like to watch my 47-minute video on how to manage yourself and your time and become dramatically more productive, just go to WakeUpProductive.com, and enter your name and email address. You can watch this video worth $100.00 for free.

So let’s talk about preventing distractions and interruptions. As you probably know, distraction and interruption are the ultimate time stealers. If you get interrupted or distracted, it takes 10 or 20 minutes from when you end the distraction or interruption to just come back and get back to where you were. So if you get distracted or interrupted every 10 or 20 minutes, you don’t get anything done at all. Who’s had that experience in their lives?

I’ve discovered that there are three big distracters and interrupters in the modern work environment, especially if you work from home, especially if you work around computers, especially if you’re using the internet while you’re working. The big three distracters and interrupters are cell phones and text messages, instant messenger and Skype and e-mail. So let’s talk about the three of them.

Cell phones and text messages. When you have your cell phone and your text message just rolling, what does that say to the world? It says, “Distract and interrupt me any time you want.” It’s especially bad if you actually answer your cell phone or respond to text messages very quickly. What I do is I take my cell phone, and I either turn it off or I put it somewhere where I can’t hear it. I never have the ringer on my cell phone turned on because I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to program people that they can call me and reach me, that they can send me a text, and I’ll get back to them immediately. Why? Because then, they’ll start expecting it, and I will have to deal with their distractions and interruptions all day. So turn off the cell phone. Put it on vibrate. Put it outside of your range, so you can’t hear it. It’s not around you. Don’t keep it clipped to your body. Then, you can work and focus chunks of uninterrupted time.

The online version of this is instant messenger and Skype. Anything where you’ve got a status that you can leave on, and people can ping you or contact you and say, “Hey, can I talk to you right now?” The answer here is only turn on your availability a couple of times a day. Set aside blocks of time, maybe from 11:00 to 12:00 and then from 4:00 to 5:00 where you set your status as on, and you’re available.

A nice little trick with voicemail you can do is you can set up your voicemail so that when people call you, it says, “Hi, I can’t take your call right now. I return calls typically between 11:00 and 12:00 and between 4:00 and 5:00. I’m also available by e-mail and instant messenger during those times. If you want to reach me, it’s urgent, try me during one of those times or just leave me a message here, and I’ll get back to you during one of those times,” which is a way to program people not to just interrupt you and expect you’re going to answer the phone. It kind of programs them to expect to wait a few hours because there’s really nothing in the modern environment that can’t wait at least a few hours.

Now, the big one, the big problem is e-mail. E-mail is probably the biggest consumer of our time and our attention that exists in the modern work environment. The trouble with e-mail isn’t just that there’s a lot of it. The trouble is we get addicted to checking it. Even worse than that, we get the little alerts so that e-mails pop up, and we see them as they’re coming in. They go, “Ding,” and then it distracts it. Then, we go click on it, and then it pops up the e-mail, and it makes it so easy.

So to prevent distraction and interruption with e-mail, I recommend that you do a couple of things. First of all, don’t have your e-mail browser on – don’t have your e-mail window open – unless you’re specifically dedicating time to checking and returning e-mail. Especially turn off the pings and the beeps and the pop ups because that stuff is just a constant racket of distraction and interruption. If you’re like me, you get dozens – hundreds of e-mails every day. If you just do the math, if you leave on the pop up or the ding or the beep or the thing that pings you, you’re going to be distracted every few minutes all day, and it will literally destroy your productivity.

Even better, borrow from the technique that I gave you a little earlier, and answer e-mails and return calls during specific times during the day. I call this scheduling your interruptions. Schedule time where you’re going to be doing a lot of this back and forth and where you’ll make yourself available in case people need to kind of reach you in a hurry.

If you start focusing on those big three distracters and interrupters, which is the cell phone, the instant messenger and the e-mail, and the variations of those, you’ll get yourself a long way down the field to eliminating distraction and interruption. Ultimately, what you want to do is you want to turn all that stuff off and as Peter Drucker recommends, work in focus blocks of uninterrupted time of minimum 90 minutes. Any of us can do that. I like to get little kitchen timers or little digital timers for $5.00 or $10.00. You can get them on amazon.com. Type in there an hour or 90 minutes, and just turn everything off, and just focus on getting one thing done. That’s really the ultimate way to prevent distraction and interruption.

Finally, if you’d like to learn how to really master time management and productivity, learn how to keep yourself focused, learn how to eliminate procrastination for good and learn how to create positive habits and eliminate negative ones, just go to WakeUpProductive.com right now to watch my 47 minute video on how to manage yourself and your time and how to make yourself dramatically more productive.

The video is worth $100.00, but you can watch it for free by just visiting WakeUpProductive.com, entering your name and e-mail address and opting in. Of course, I’ll also send you many more valuable free video trainings, and I’ll also send you private invitations to listen to me interviewing some of the top experts in the world on business, marketing, success and productivity all for free. Just go to WakeUpProductive.com, enter your name and e-mail address to get it all right now.