You Need These 3 Things to Maximize Your Productivity

All right, what’s up? All you hyper focused entrepreneurs today, I want to share with you three things that you need if you want to maximize your productivity. I think productivity is a really sexy concept. We’re all constantly in this pursuit of doing more and more and more, especially as, like, these peak performers, high performers, high achievers, entrepreneurs who are like, there’s so much to do, there’s so many balls to throw up in the air, and we’re trying to figure out, how can we do this to the best of our ability. So, productivity, the systems, processes, the habits, routines that we structure our lives, the tools, the resources that we use to help us run our lives and manage the chaos, little tweaks can go a very, very long way. But at its core, I want to boil it all back. Instead of giving you, like, the five productivity tools that I use on a daily basis, which I’ve already done videos on, but if I was really to break it down, it’s like noise canceling headphones. It’s a sharpie. It’s a notebook.

I’m real basic when it comes to the tools that I use. More important are the core. These three core ideas that I want you to keep at the forefront of your mind. If you want to be maximally productive or effective, that’s the better way of looking at it, because often when we think of productivity, we think of how much we’re getting done. Effectiveness is all around what we get done. Getting more of the right things done might mean that you work less hard, but you make more progress as a result. So the three things that you need if you want to maximize your productivity is, number one, you need clarity. You need clarity about what it is you’re trying to achieve.

Where is it you’re trying to go? If you imagine that you are driving a car in the middle of the night and it’s pouring rain and you can barely see past your headlights, you are going to drive slower on that road than if you were in the middle of the day. It’s sunny. You can see for miles. Clarity leads to speed. The more clear you are about where you’re trying to go, you can say no to the things that are going to distract you. You can say yes to the things that you can see so clearly in your mind’s eye will move you towards your goals, and you will make progress as a result. So when you’re moving slowly through your life, when you’re feeling overwhelmed, when you’re feeling anxious, a lot of times it stems from simply the fact that you don’t have clarity about where you’re trying to go or clarity about what is actually the most important thing to do in the next moment. And that’s where having some kind of priority prioritization system is very, very helpful for you to build a rank order and figure out what are the things that I should do with my time.

I’ve done tons of videos on prioritization systems, so go check those out. The ice framework is one of my favorite. The Eisenhower matrix is also a very powerful concept. So go check those out. So that’s, number one, you need clarity. If you want to be maximally productive, you got to be clear about what it is you’re trying to achieve. Number two, you need to achieve clarity. In my estimation, you need boredom.

You need to make time to give your mind the space that it needs to wander. I think the overactive mind just kind of stays surface level with the things that are dancing across the surface of your mind. And typically, those thoughts are the most urgent things because they’re the loudest. They’re the things that are pinging right on, right atop the water. Right. We need to still our minds so that we’re not just paying attention to those water droplets falling on the pond, but that we’re going deeper beneath the surface and we’re getting down to where it’s quiet and where it’s dark, because down there is where you’re really going to find the pearls. That’s where you’re going to find the true value. Boredom, I think, is one of the most interesting concepts because nobody wants to be bored.

Boredom is a very uncomfortable feeling. It, you know, makes you feel anxious. It makes you feel antsy and kind of frustrated. And if you look at the evolutionary genesis of boredom, it was this tool that our bodies have created to move us to motivated, motivate us towards taking an action, to going out into the world and actually doing something. It’s because we’re bored that we go in and we explore, and we explore with our curiosity, and we create, we invent, and we forge new paths into the world. Without boredom, we would be content to just sit and do nothing all the time. And the species as we know it would not have gotten to where we are. So boredom is a really interesting parallel or antithesis to productivity.

You need the one to make space so that you can go and attack the other with full gusto. And that’s counterintuitive, because boredom, again, it’s very. It’s very uncomfortable. And not only that, when you are making space for boredom in your life, you’re gonna feel as though you’re not being productive. And so it feels counterintuitive, paradoxical, that by doing, making time to do nothing, you are actually improving your overall productivity, because you’re gonna come with better ideas, come with more clarity about what it is you should be doing. What’s the important thing where you’re trying to go to? So that when you do work per unit of time that you put in energy, you’re getting more out of it, and that’s a great thing. So you have to give yourself permission to experience boredom to go make space for it. And that’s the third thing that we need to do here if we want to maximize our productivity.

Number one, we need clarity. We need boredom to become clear and to get bored, we need to make space. We need to carve out time to go and be bored. We need to make space to get away from our phones, from our technology, from our loved ones, from all the infinite distractions in our life that are keeping us from experiencing the true boredom, that going beneath the surface and getting away from the pitter patter of thoughts just sprinkling atop the surface of the pond. So we need clarity. We need boredom, and we need space. Space to experience boredom. Boredom to gain clarity.

Those three things, if you can prioritize getting those into your life on a consistent basis, you’re gonna be more productive as a result. Rather than just putting out the most urgent things, putting out the top fires the things that are top of mind. Usually, the things that are top of mind are the least important, in my experience, at least. It’s really interesting. We run away from the truly important things. We push them down, and we stay on the surface level because they’re easier to deal with, typically. But the things that are gonna move us forward in life towards our goals the most quickly, they’re gonna have the biggest impact on our lives. They tend to be the ones that we’re running away from, that we push deep down.

And so we have to make space to dredge, dredge the lake bottom and bring all that goodness to the top. So make some space. Go get bored. Get clear. And I’ll catch you guys in the next episode.