Productivity Dynamo: Time Management Secrets to Supercharge Your Productivity

By Ryan Tiernan

Do you want to double or even ten times your productivity?

 

This book contains world-renowned techniques and strategies on how to push the limits on your work output.

 

After years of studying the world's most successful people, I've learned that they all have one thing in common.  They work more, they sleep less, and they get more done.  They're not always the smartest or most capable, but they have the ability to focus single-mindedly on their goal and work on it until completion.

 

A little about myself:  I wasn't born productive.  I'm just an average person just like you.  In fact, in terms of productivity, I was FAR below average.  However, by using the strategies and techniques I'm about to share with you, I've been able to take my productivity to superhuman levels.

 

Over the past 10+ years, I've studied roughly 10,000 dollars' worth of books, seminars, and training programs, implemented and trialed everything I've learned, and compiled the world's top strategies on productivity and time management.  This book is the result.

 

In this book you'll learn:

• The secret to overcoming procrastination
• How to create habits that literally put your success on autopilot
• How to double or even ten times your willpower
• How to design and execute a morning ritual
• How to manage your time on a yearly, monthly, weekly, daily, and even hourly basis
• How to use focused time blocks to ramp up your productivity
• How to use rest and renewal to supercharge your batteries
• How to train like a corporate athlete
• And much, much more

 

By purchasing now, you'll also receive my FREE Productivity Optimizer that's exclusive to readers of Productivity Dynamo.  This quick start guide has everything you need to jumpstart your productivity ASAP.

 

Download Your Copy Today!

 

To order Productivity Dynamo and TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR PRODUCTIVITY, click the BUY button and download your copy right now!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ryan Winter
• Release date: Nov 12, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393442912

Book preview

Energy and Willpower

Chapter 1

Willpower is Like a Muscle

Willpower is like a muscle; it is strongest in the morning and fatigues as the day wears on. Picture doing a set of bicep curls. As the reps increase the muscle fatigues. This is exactly like willpower. Early in the morning, willpower is strongest. You can accomplish virtually anything with hardly any resistance. At the end of the day, however, it's nearly impossible to motivate yourself to do almost anything.

Like a muscle, willpower can be trained. The more you push yourself, the more willpower and discipline you will develop. There is a limit, though. After a certain point, you will feel tired and need to recharge. The trick to productivity is understanding this and working with it rather than against it.

Your body's energy levels will ebb and flow as the day goes on. Your natural circadian rhythms dictate that you will sleep roughly 8 hours and be awake for roughly 16. There are other mini-cycles, however, that occur throughout the day. These cycles are typically 2 hours to 1 – meaning you will feel energized for 2 hours and then often feel a crash. You may have experienced this when writing a paper for school. You are engaged for 1 to 2 hours, followed by a crash in energy levels.

If you are unaware of these energy fluctuations, you will be prone to reach for a cup of coffee and plow through this energy crash. A far more effective strategy, however, is to give yourself a rest, let yourself recharge, and then crank out another 2 hours.

Think of it like doing a set of bicep curls. When your arms are too tired to do another rep, do you push through it? To a certain extent, yes. But eventually, you rest the muscles for another set. By trying to push through, you are only able to achieve 5-10 more reps with extreme pain and agony, but by taking a rest and then doing another set, you can achieve 10-20 more reps with ease.

This is how you need to approach productivity. Take a project and break it down into sets just like you would a muscle group. Push yourself to perform short sprints followed by short power rests. Then, perform as many sets as you can throughout the day. Increase sets, not reps.

Burnout

If you push your willpower past its natural limits, you will reach burnout. Reaching burnout is counterproductive because it takes more time and energy to recover from burnout than you would have lost by avoiding it in the first place. The trick to being productive is to stay in the zone as long as possible. The zone is a flow state between being bored from not doing enough, and burnt out from doing too much. If you rest and renew too much, you will feel bored like you need to stimulate yourself, to feel a sense of challenge and excitement. If you overwork yourself, you feel burnt out, and all you will want is to relax and unwind. Maximum productivity falls right in the sweet spot between these two states.

Think of it like a car. As the RPMs increase, the car gains more torque and horsepower. However, if you go past the redline, the car will actually lose torque and horsepower. Furthermore, you risk blowing the engine, forcing you to go to the shop for repairs. The sweet spot of productivity and horsepower is just under the redline. You are pushing yourself hard enough to get the most done, but you aren’t blowing your engine and returning to the shop for repairs.

Burnout effectively kills productivity. If you can keep yourself productive without feeling burnt out, you will be able to go on and on like the Energizer bunny. For example, if you are sleeping well, eating right, socializing regularly, and spending adequate time relaxing and recharging, you will be able to work seven days per week if the occasion calls for it. However, if you are frequently waking up in the middle of the night, going to bed too late, and constantly pushing yourself past your limits daily, you will need a weekend off due to physical and mental exhaustion.

We call these strategies time management, but in reality, it's actually energy management. You see, odds are, your dance card is already full. You simply don't have more time to manage – you are maxed out. Your only other options are to manage your other resources, such as money and energy. By learning to do more with the time that you already have, you can get twice as much accomplished in the same amount of time.

Hitting the Wall

Hitting the wall is when you are so burnt out that you can’t get anything accomplished no matter how hard you try. Although there will be times in life where you will need to burn the candle at both ends to achieve success, hitting the wall should be avoided at all times.

Using Stephen Covey’s metaphor of sharpening the saw, hitting the wall would be like sawing a tree with a completely dulled blade. No matter how hard you push and how much friction you generate, you simply won’t make progress cutting the tree.

The problem is, since we weren't taught these principles in school, we think that by pushing harder we will get more accomplished and be more productive, when in fact, the opposite is often true. Using the saw example, we would get far more accomplished by investing time and energy into making the saw as sharp as possible. We would get the most accomplished by spending enough time and energy to keep it sharp and effective, but not wasting time by over-sharpening it. On the other end of the spectrum, we would work hard sawing the tree, but not overwork ourselves by sawing with a dull blade, as this would be counterproductive.

Being slightly overworked and burnt out is one thing, but hitting the wall can completely set you back. If you hit the wall on a Monday and have a full work week ahead of you, it could be up to a week before you get any quality work done.

If your goal is to trade time for money and just log long hours, it won't really matter if you are in the zone or engaged. You can just live life like a zombie and sleepwalk through it. However, if you want to achieve outstanding results in your life, you are going to need to have your head in the game. This is where your highest levels of creativity and engagement will come into play, and you will create the results you want in your life.

Rest and Renewal

A counter-intuitive way to be more productive is to use frequent blocks of rest and renewal both on a macro and a micro-level. To maximize willpower and productivity, we must completely unplug from what we are doing and go into a complete state of renewal. In this state, we are actively seeking to disengage from all of our goals and aspirations and just relax. The trick is to actively recover as much willpower as possible and then use it in sprints or bursts of energy.

On a macro level, a week vacation would allow you to come back to your work refreshed and with a new sense of energy and vigor. Moving towards the micro level, weekends, or days off provide similar results. Moving further, resting for an hour at the end of a long day would provide a chance for renewal for the following day. On a super micro level, taking rest breaks between focused blocks of productive time allows you to stay in the zone during a project. This could mean working for 20 minutes followed by 10-minute rests, or working for 2-hour periods followed by 1-hour rests.

Treat your rest and renewal as seriously as your productivity. Try to incorporate power resting rituals. Make sure you are completely unplugged and resting with the intention of recharging your batteries to full capacity.

Stephen Covey calls this sharpening the saw. It’s like cutting down a tree. You could saw away for 4 hours, or, you could spend 1 hour sharpening the saw, enabling you to saw the tree in 1 hour. By investing an hour into sharpening the saw, you cut the tree in half the time.

The first and most important step to adequate rest and renewal is a strong, steady, and effective sleep schedule. With a strong sleep cycle in place, you will be able to plow through high workloads like a buzz saw – with weekends and vacations being optional. Morning rituals start the night before – with going to bed early and getting a rock-solid night of sleep.

HIIT Training

Have you ever heard of HIIT training? It stands for high-intensity interval training. It is the most effective way to train your cardiovascular system in the gym. It works like this. You go all out until you can't go anymore. On a treadmill, this would be like running 6MPH until your legs burn and you are forced to stop. Then, you bring the treadmill down to 2.5MPH and walk until you regain your strength. Then you repeat this over and over again until you can't go anymore.

This is how you should approach your work. Work as hard as you can at max capacity. When you start to feel fatigued and exhausted, take a break. Grab some food and water and just take a rest. When your energy returns, go again. Attack your work fast and hard. Keep doing this in intervals, and you will get crazy amounts of work done.

The added benefit is that your body adapts to increase its work capacity. For example, when you perform HIIT training daily on a treadmill, your body will be able to perform longer and longer sprints with decreased recovery time. The same can be said for focused time blocks. The more you perform these sets of focused time blocks, the stronger and more resilient you become, allowing you to work harder and harder with less recovery.

Starting a Business

When it comes to just working a 9-5 job with weekends off, burnout isn’t as much of an issue. It is when we add additional goals and aspirations that we truly need tools and techniques to put the pedal to the metal and handle tough situations. If things get busy with family, the kids, or for some reason, you are feeling overwhelmed, these tools can really come into play to maximize your productivity and keep up with a demanding workload.

Perhaps the perfect example of this is starting a business. When it comes to starting a business, you will often find yourself forced to burn the candle at both ends and push yourself past your limits. There is simply no other way to get the job done.

When starting a business, expect to be working your regular job, plus overtime, while keeping up with chores, the kids, other life events, and putting countless hours to the business on top of this. It often means putting extra hours into the startup, and extra hours into your regular job to fund the startup. This is where these strategies and techniques really shine. Keeping an awesome sleep schedule is paramount to handle the 6 and 7-day workweeks, mornings are necessary to devote to morning rituals, and a second burst of energy is required at the end of the day to put in the extra hours.

The trick is to stay sharp and avoid burnout. If you can get in the habit of quickly and effectively recharging your batteries, you can commit to an enormous workload and be able to keep up. If your renewal rituals begin to fail you, however, you will find it harder and harder to keep up with a demanding workload.

Habits

Creating a habit requires a high amount of willpower. Conversely, a habit that is in place will run on autopilot with virtually zero willpower. This has a few implications when it comes to productivity.

Only Form One New Habit at a Time

Trying to create more than one habit at a time is extremely difficult due to the finite nature of willpower. It takes seven days minimum to make a new habit, and 30 days to make it rock solid. Later, I will recommend a number of habits to put into your morning ritual, and the order to form these habits. For example, forming the habit of waking up early is going to be extremely difficult without first forming the habit of going to sleep early.

Overall, just remember that trying to form more than one habit at a time can be counterproductive because your body simply doesn't have the willpower to keep up. Instead, focus your willpower like a laser on creating one habit until it is solid. Then, create another. Continue this until your life is full of habits and running on autopilot.

Think of your willpower like the sunlight. On a sunny day, it may be strong enough to burn you. However, if you use a magnifying glass to focus the sunlight, you can create harsh burns even on a cloudy day. The trick to creating habits or accomplishing goals is to focus your willpower like sunlight through a magnifying glass. By doing this, you can smash goals and create new habits systematically one by one.

Escape Velocity

When first forming a habit, you will encounter escape velocity. This is a metaphor related to a rocket ship taking off towards space. At first, the rocket requires a tremendous amount of fuel just to leave the ground. Leaving the earth’s gravity field also requires a tremendous amount of energy. However, when the rocket breaks the atmosphere, it just floats into space effortlessly.

This is like creating a new habit. At first, you will need to force yourself to do it. It will take a tremendous amount of willpower and discipline. With time, the habit will become easier and easier to follow through with. Eventually, you actually feel pulled towards taking action, and it would actually feel strange not to. This is how habits are created.

Once one habit is in place, you move onto another. Eventually, your day is full of productive habits that pull you towards your goals on autopilot. This is how you live a life that appears to require tremendous amounts of discipline, when in reality, you are just using the power of habit to achieve superhuman levels of productivity.

When your day is nothing other than a string of positive habits, you will literally be pulled towards your goals on autopilot. On the outside looking in, it looks like you have tremendous willpower and discipline – the discipline to work out, eat the right foods, work on a business, and so forth. When in reality, you are actually using less willpower because everything is ingrained in habit.

Focused Blocks of Time

Focused blocks of uninterrupted time are used to channel willpower in a highly focused manner. Think of the magnifying glass example. This is like using focused blocks of time to focus your willpower in to sprints or bursts of energy. By using these bursts followed by bursts of recovery, you stay in the zone and continually produce results like a dynamo.

An excellent tool for focused time is a timer. By setting the timer for 30 minutes, you allow yourself to remain completely focused without worrying about the time. It gives you a feeling of relief to know that soon enough, the timer will end, and you will have a chance to rest. This is mentally freeing and allows you to focus like a laser beam.

This works great for combatting procrastination. A perfect example is writing a paper. You dread writing, so you procrastinate and never find the time. What you can do in this example is set the timer for 5 minutes. This makes you feel more comfortable about getting started because after all, it's only 5 minutes. After your first 5-minute chunk, you take a rest and then set the timer for 10 minutes, then 15, and so on. Eventually, you are in the zone and writing for hour-long chunks at a time. When writing this book, for example, I would often tell myself, just get 20 minutes in for today. Next thing I know, over an hour has gone by, and I am feeling a sense of pride and accomplishment in my productivity. When you get really good at these techniques, you can rip 3, 4, and even 5-hour chunks at a time, moving towards your goals at warp speed.

Because of your body's natural tendency to ebb and flow with energy, you actually get a lot more accomplished using time blocks. For example, is it more productive to just not sleep? After all, you'd have eight more hours per day. Of course, not. Just as your body is about to feel tired and ready for rest, you give it the rest it needs, and as soon as the body is ready for another burst of energy, you work with this burst to get the most out of it. Go with it like going with the wind. When there is a gust of wind, put your sails up and sail into it. When the wind is at your face, put your sails down and ride it out. When we work with our energy rather than against it, we are dynamos, but if we ignore the signs of fatigue and try to push through it, we are wasting massive amounts of willpower which is counterproductive.

Take One Full Day Off Per Week

Eben Pagan recommends taking one full day off per week to achieve peak productivity. I have found this to be true in my own life as well. There will be times in our lives where we need to burn the midnight oil and work seven days per week, and this is normal. However, given the option, try to take at least one full day off per week. A great sleep schedule, morning ritual, and night routine can certainly optimize your willpower and energy levels, but taking one full day off will take this to the next level, enabling you to accomplish more on your remaining six days. I recommend one full day per week of socialization, rest, and recreation to max out your willpower weekly.

Eat That Frog

What I am about to share with you is perhaps the biggest game-changer in productivity in existence. What causes procrastination? Let’s say we are faced with 10 tasks. Each task is productive, but some are more productive than others. Let’s say one task is working on a paper or a report. This task is your most important task, but it is also the most difficult. The other 9 productive tasks include cleaning your room, going to the gym, meal prepping, and various forms of staying busy. At the end of the day, you could stay busy with all of these tasks and trick yourself into thinking you were productive. You could spend 8 hours working on these lower leverage tasks, but you would have been more productive by spending an hour on your highest leverage task.

This highest leverage task is your frog. Your goal in transforming your productivity is to eat this frog first thing in the morning, before moving on to any other tasks. If you put it off and save it for later, odds are you will never get it done. You will be either out of energy, or too busy. Eating this frog