Five Minutes is All It Takes

This simple five minute task, done at the end of your workday, is guaranteed to make your next workday more productive.

So if you’re tired of finishing your days and feeling like they’ve all slipped away, implement this simple plan starting today.

Craig Ballantyne

“Where you grew up has no bearing on where YOU DECIDE you are going to be today.” – Dan Kennedy…You control everything. Your success is your responsibility.
_______________________
A New American Dream

This book surprised me. I was given Kevin O’Leary’s, “Cold Hard Truth” for Christmas, and I thought I’d just flip through it and ‘read it’ in about 10 minutes. However, it was much better than expected. While I haven’t watched his TV shows (Dragon’s Den here in Canada, and Shark Tank on ABC in America), the story of how Kevin and his business partners built his educational software company was inspiring. The book also lived up to its name.

What Kevin sacrificed is more than what 99% of people I’ve met would ever consider sacrificing for success, however, that doesn’t mean we can’t learn big lessons from him. The one that connected with me the most was his willingness to get up at 4:30am every day to move his business ahead. Like myself and Michael Masterson, Kevin realized that this was a ‘magic time’ in the day, where he could get more done in less time before other distractions got in his way.

Listen, it doesn’t matter what time you get up now, but if you simply set the alarm 15 minutes earlier, over the course of a five-day work week you’d have more than an hour of quality work time. Over a year, you’d have 65 hours. That’s significant. That can be the difference between an American Dream achieved or just a fantasy in your head. And that’s the cold, hard truth.

Discover how to achieve your American Dream and Financial Independence here

_______________________
How to Get More Done
By Craig Ballantyne

In order to squeeze the most productivity out of your day – so that you have the satisfaction of accomplishment, rather than the dreaded feeling of another ‘lost day’ – you really need to have a plan.

And the plan not only shows you what you should be doing, but what you need to avoid as well.

Both my private coaching clients and I have found that we can dramatically increase the amount of work we get done – and free time we have – when we script our day, and I’ll show you exactly how to do that in a second. But first, there’s a cool little secret “Millionaire’s time management” method that I want to share with you.

I first heard this trick from Donald Trump’s lead lawyer, George Ross. George himself is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and he learned this from Trump himself.

Here’s what George recommended. “Get a simple notebook and carry it around for the next three days. Break the page up into 15-minute blocks and write down what you are doing each day at those times.”

Let’s say your workday starts at 8am. You’ll set up your notebook like this:

8:00
8:15
8:30
8:45
9:00.
Etc.

And then you’ll just make notes beside each time.

You’ll quickly identify your time wasting habits, as well as when you are most productive – that’s what I call your magic time. The next step is to identify solutions for overcoming the time wasting and to increase the time spent being productive.

For example, maybe you check your email every day at 9:30, and then you start cycling through news websites. That’s a habit that must be broken if you want to build more productivity into your day.

And that’s where scripting your day comes in.

As legendary small business coach, Dan Kennedy, says, “If you don’t plan your day, someone else will plan it for you.”

So that’s why I now script my day, and try to do so several days in advance.

Each night, before you end your work day, you need to script out the next work day. Here are some tips on how to do this…

– Decide what you are going to get done.
– Assign blocks of time to it.
– Get it done & stick to your time limits.

It’s that simple. This also means blocking out unexpected calls and not allowing for anyone else to come marching in to your office to steal your time.

You can, and should script your day from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to sleep. Of course, you need to put in relaxation time, and free time where you can do whatever you want. But if you find the time ‘gets away from you’ at home and at work, and therefore you miss your workouts, you don’t get projects done in a timely fashion, or you’re missing out on family events, simply scripting your day will improve your ability to manage your time and energy.

You also need to make sure you protect what I called your “Magic Time”. This is where you are able to accomplish more in a short time than you would in a much longer time at any other point in the day. Essentially, your magic time is your most effective time of the day.

For me, the time is first thing in the morning, and that’s when I get my best writing done, and when I do it the fastest.

Now you might not be a writer or a morning person, but there’s something that you do better each day during a specific time of the day. Whatever it is that you are doing that is important to you, make sure that your scripted day includes a block of time set aside for your magic time.

So again, at the end of each day, script tomorrow’s day.

– Decide what you are going to get done.
– Assign blocks of time to those activities.
– Get it done & stick to your time limits.

Now you have the five minute recipe for a more productive day and better time management.

[Ed. Note. Craig Ballantyne is the author of Financial Independence Monthly, a complete blueprint to helping you take control of your financial future with a web–based business that you can operate from anywhere in the world – including a coffee shop, your kitchen table, or anywhere around the world where there is Internet access. Discover how you can achieve the American Dream and your financial independence here. You've never seen anything like this before.]

This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, a free newsletter dedicated to creating wealth and success through inspiration and practical, proven advice. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.