“The speed of the leader is the speed of the team.”
According to John Maxwell,
It is super important to get stuff done fast. Our true competitor is time, how fast can we do it? That’s how we win in the market, by getting stuff done, by shipping the product fast. If you can do something in 3 months instead of 12, you can do 4 of those in a year compared to someone who is slower.
Being slow means you will do less stuff in your life. Imaging reaching 90 and you haven’t done the things you wanted to do?
So how can we do stuff faster?
- We only have 24 hours. Be ruthless about time. We are racing against the clock.
- Do a time audit – where do you spend your time?
- Schedule everything, plan it all out.
- Set a timer when you work. Parkinsons law is that the work expands to fill the time available. Can you do a task in 10 minutes? If you had to, then maybe you can do it. I’m writing this article in 15 minutes. That’s why I am to get everything that I need to done before lunch and meetings in the afternoon, an I also aim to finish early each day. Most stuff can be done much faster if you are forced to do it fast. If you have all the time in the world, it will take much longer.
- Cut out the unnecessary stuff – have priorities.
- Allocate time to unimportant stuff – I have an hour each day to GSD Get Stuff Done- I just put all the tasks in there I need to do and I try to get as much stuff done in there. The most important stuff first, and then the other stuff I will do tomorrow.
- Focus on one thing at a time – multitasking is not efficient.
- Have a clear goal – what are you working towards? And also have clear 1-3 big tasks to get done each day.
- Clean your desk – tidy your room. The cleaner and tidier your room and desk the more clear you can think and faster you can operate.
- Batch similar tasks together. Do one morning of meetings, one of creating content, etc., doing similar things together is much more efficient – try it.
- Sleep well – sleeping makes things more efficient and you can just do more when you are better.
- Work out – going to the gym makes you more efficient.
- Meditate
- Learn to make quick decisions.
- Say no more – do less stuff. Turn off social media – that destroys your productivity.
- Prioritise doing tasks that is blocking other people. Eg., if someone is waiting for you to reply before doing something, then that should be priority over your work.
- Hire super smart people – that makes everything work much better and more efficient. It also forces you to raise your game and become better.
- Priorities – what is the one thing you can do that will make everything else easier or even unnecessary? There are some tasks that can have domino effects to accomplish everything else faster and free up your time – eg., hiring someone, or bringing in capital, or just eliminating some work that is not necessary.
- Use leverage. What are the things you can do that will increase how fast you can do things? Using other people, using money to do more stuff in less time.
- Learning is also a multiplier, as you learn more you become better and more efficient.
- Remove distractions (work from home is more efficient?)
- Try to get everything done before lunch – I’m more efficient in the morning
- Spend time thinking and planning – step back, and look at what you are doing, is there a better and more efficient way? You can probably automate a lot of what you are doing, or use technology to make it more efficient.
- Instead of walking to the gym (10 minutes), I now take the bike (5 minutes), what other things can you do more efficiently? How about eating? How much time do you spend preparing food? Can you make food in bulk in one day, order a takeaway or get a chef?
- Reward yourself! When you’ve done a goal, have some kind of reward.
- Have holidays! I am super productive before and after a holiday.
This is a good podcast I like: The daily boost, giving inspirational messages each day. He did an episode about: Is it time to move faster? https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/is-it-time-to-move-faster/id207251905?i=1000531046100
Here are some videos about how get more done in faster time.
