Tools & Tips

3Ps to high performance

DATE: Aug 16, 2014
WRITTEN BY: Susan Kuepfer

According to Brendon Burchard, (http://brendonburchard.com) this tip is the number one thing we can do to maximize our productivity.

Background
He has done studies ( I dont know how unbiased or good these studies are) that show that people who do their email within the first 30 min to 60 min of the day, lose 30% of productivity over the week. So based on that, to gain that 30%, he wants us to use our email intentionally and strategically, and not reactively.
The Tip
When you get up in the morning, do the following:
  • Do your regular morning routine (getting up, reading, running, yoga, walk the dog tc.)
  • Eat a good breakfast
  • When you get to work or at home, sit at your desk, take a piece of paper and do the following:
  1. Draw three horizontal lines across the page
  2. Top row: This is your PROJECTS row.
    1. Fill in your top projects at the moment, try to keep it to the top three to five. They might be a mix of work and personal or all work or all personal (if you are not working)
    2. Write down 3-5 actions under each to get each project moving foward. They are not all actions to be done today… just a list of potential actions to move the projects forward.
  3. Middle row: This is your PEOPLE row
    1. Draw a vertical line down the middle of this row: On one side is a list of people you are waiting to hear from and on the other side is a list of people you want to contact
    2. Fill in the two lists
  4. Bottom row:  This is your PRIORITY row for today
    1. Write down the 10 things you want to / must get done today.
  5. Now you can open your EMAIL
    1. Sort the inbox by FROM
    2. See if any of the people you are waiting to hear from have replied,  if not, follow up.
    3. Send out the notes to the people you need to want to contact about something (from the middle row above)
 Once you have done your top 10 things for the day, then you can decide how to attack the other emails… There are many ways of doing this.  Mine is to keep a clean inbox and use TRAF (Trash, Reply, Act or File) and to only look at the emails at certain times (between tasks as a break for example) for a specific length of time.
So… I started this morning and I have to say… I feel energized. Would love to hear back from any of you if you try it, how you adapt it for yourself and the results!

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