Jake Knapp is a best selling author and motivational speaker. His book, Sprint, unveils some exciting concepts on getting results or just being busy.
Throughout our day, we follow defaults. The author suggest thinking about it similar to when you buy a cell phone. The phone comes with defaults built in, you immediately customize it ( with ringtones, photos, apps, etc.) to suit your needs.
In daily life, we also have defaults around our morning routine, things like text messaging, communication patterns and more. With most of these defaults, we promptly fall into them and forget to customize them to suit us.
Knapp suggests you question your defaults to redesign them, so they work better for you.
What's troubling today is we have access to everything at all times, so it’s easy to confuse busyness with results.
For instance, your default may be to continually check email. This results in added stress and doesn’t always equate to productivity because we go back to those emails many times before they are resolved.
Ruthless Prioritizing
The motivational speaker and author suggests you craft your day around what’s important to you. At work, if you focus on one major accomplishment per day, you will find your job much more rewarding, and you will be more productive.
What I love about it, is the book outlines 80 different strategies. There are a lot of things you can do differently. If you applied just a few, you could boost productivity and create more balance.
I’ve enjoyed the advice to prioritize and do the important things first in the morning. I am most productive early on in the day, so I do the impactful stuff (like writing articles or working on a speech) urgent things first.
Once you decide what’s most important, it’s easier to do it!
So much of our time is reacting to news, email and social media. Get a handle on this loss can make a big difference.
Also, if you have long-term goals you don’t get so quickly caught up in short-term time wasters.
