Secret #1: They focus on minutes, not hours.
Average performers default to hours and half-hour blocks on their calendar. Highly successful people know there are 1,440 minutes in every day and there is nothing more valuable than time. Money can be lost and made again, but time spent can never be reclaimed1. As legendary2 Olympic gymnast Shannon Miller3 told me, To this day, I keep a schedule that is almost minute by minute. You must master your minutes to master your life.
Secret #2: They focus only on one thing.
Ultra productive people know their Most important Task and work on it for one to two hours each morning, without interruptions. Tom Ziglar, CEO of Ziglar Inc., shared, Invest the first part of your day working on your number one priority that will help build your business. What task will have the biggest impact on reaching your goal? What accomplishment4 will get you promoted at work?
Secret #3: They don't use to-do lists.
Throw away your to-do list; instead schedule everything on your calendar. It turns out only 41% of items on to-do lists are ever actually done. And all those undone5 items lead to stress and insomnia6 because of the Zeigarnik effect. Highly productive people put everything on their calendar and then work and live from that calendar. Use a calendar and schedule your entire day into 15-minute blocks. It sounds like a pain, but this will set you up in the 95th percentile, advises the co-founder of The Art of Charm, Jordan Harbinger.
Secret #4: They beat procrastination7 with time travel.
Your future self can't be trusted. That's because we are time inconsistent. We buy veggies today because we think we'll eat healthy salads all week; then we throw out green rotting mush in the future. I bought P90x because I think I'm going to start exercising vigorously and yet the box sits unopened one year later. What can you do now to make sure your future self does the right thing? Anticipate how you will self-sabotage in the future, and come up with a solution to defeat your future self.
Secret #5: They make it home for dinner.
I first learned this from Intel's Andy Grove8, There is always more to be done, more that should be done, always more than can be done. Highly successful people know what they value in life. Yes, work, but also what else they value. There is no right answer, but for many, values include: family time, exercise, giving back. They consciously allocate9 their 1,440 minutes a day to each area they value and then they stick to the schedule.
