[IMKT] - Eben Pagan - Wake up productive

The Wake Up Productive Time Management and Productivity Training Program is a series of videos on how to manage yourself and your time and become dramatically more productive.

In talking about time management and its importance, Eben Pagan notes that you can’t actually manage time, for it runs at the same speed whatever you decide to do. Rather what you can do is learn to manage yourself, which is a big challenge nowadays since we are dealing with all kinds of challenges that we never had to deal with before.

In this program, Pagan also talks about setting goals. For him, people fail at setting goals because they either see it as a “killjoy” activity or they actually don’t know how to set goals. He proposes that people should look at goal setting as more of a problem-solving task that requires imagination, focus, setting up the right conditions, and of course hard work.

Small businesses can also learn a thing or two about productivity from this course. It outlines key issues that affect business productivity:

Minimizing and eliminating distraction and interruption,
Focusing on the high value activities, and 3) Creating habits and routines so that we do the right things every day.
Cell phones and text messages, instant messenger and Skype and e-mail are examples of distractions according to Eben Pagan. For him, business people need to come up with a system that steers clear of these technologies so they can give more focus on the core operations of business and be able to get the most out of their time.

Procrastination is also a major hurdle to productivity, says Eben Pagan. To address this, you can use this 2-step technique:

Imagine the outcome that you would get if you will take action on your high priority.
Then, immediately make a big commitment to a lot of people by telling them what you wish to accomplish in a particular length of time.
Pagan also offers advice on task management and how to decide on which task to do first. Again, he has a 2-step strategy:

Make a list of all the things that you need to get done right now and then next to each of them, write down the dollar value. If you get the thing done, how much will it be worth to you in money? Just estimate. Then take the thing that’s worth the most and put at the top and do that one first. That will dramatically increase your productivity and your results.
Next, take the list of things and put them in order from the worst thing, the thing you’re going to not enjoy the most, all the way to the best thing. The thing that will be the most fun, and then get to work.
Another interesting topic in the program – and one that everybody is dying to know – is about finding the means to take more time off. Although it may sound simple, but according to Pagan, the way to take more time off is to actually schedule it in advance and to actually make that the highest priority thing that you do.

Furthermore, he says that taking some time off can actually increase productivity, because it gives a good amount of time without any focus on work, which makes people see answers to problems that have long bothered them. Having that time allows for a moment of perspective and clear thinking, which is healthy for working people.

This one survived many sessions of shift-delete on my computer.
For the New Year's resolutions.

Enjoy