#1 Some habits serve us well — like getting dressed, driving a car, or typing on a keyboard. But some are much less productive — like checking your email several times an hour. By learning how to create new habits, you can save time, increase your productivity, and expend less energy. To learn more about habits, how to break ones that don’t serve you while creating ones that do, consider …
Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear
#2 Life is all about getting things done. You aren’t born with a framework for accomplishing tasks; it’s something you learn. By implementing certain procedures you can learn how to streamline your daily activities and create new workflows that allow you to accomplish more faster, easier and with less effort. To discover how to be more effective, consider …
Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen
#3 if you want to work smarter and not harder, you need to understand your work environment as well as your work habits. Only then can you make changes that can skyrocket your productivity and save you time, money, and energy. By setting strong boundaries, you’ll reduce distractions and disruptions. By engaging the services of others, you can leverage your time, reduce your stress, and accomplish more. If you want to learn a system to achieve more by doing less, consider …
Free to Focus: A Total Productivity System to Achieve More by Doing Less by Michael Hyatt
#4 If you’re a business professional, much of your day is dictated by others. Even so, there’s a lot you can do to understand how to be more productive and effective in what you do. Understanding your ultimate career goals and what you want to accomplish is fundamental. Focusing on long term goals is key. If you want to gain a more corporate-oriented perspective of how to be more productive in all aspects of your life, consider …
Extreme Productivity: Boost Your Results, Reduce Your Hours Hardcover by Robert C. Pozen
#5 Productivity starts in your mind — with your thoughts. How you think about things is going to influence your actions and your overall productivity. If you desire to understand more about how your brain works combined with psychological perspectives and interesting applications, consider reading …
Smarter Faster Better: The Transformative Power of Real Productivity by Chales Duhigg
#6 Our brains are actually a collection of programs — ones that keep morphing as new data is introduced to it. For example, our habits are really just mini programs that are operating on autopilot. Each day, we can choose what we want to allow into our eyes and ears, which are the primary ways we “get” programmed. If you want to learn more about how you can reprogram yourself for optimum results, you may wish to read …
Mind Hacking: How to Change Your Mind for Good in 21 Days by Sir John Hargrave
#7 A daily routine that primes your mind and body for success can create amazing results over time. Practicing a set of habits on a daily basis will change the way you think. By incorporating body movement (like exercise) into the equation, the effects can be even stronger. When you change your thoughts, you change your actions. The fastest way to empower yourself for success is by making a commit to change, and then aligning your actions to inform that change. If you want to learn more about how to create the success you desire, consider …
The Miracle Morning: The Not-So-Obvious Secret Guaranteed to Transform Your Life (Before 8AM) by Hal Elrod
#8 Reading books and articles about productivity is the fastest way to learn about different productivity methods. Successful people are typically quite disciplined. They have strong habits that inform their success and they’re always looking for ways to improve how they think, what they think about, and how they perform. You have the same amount of time in the day as anyone else. What if you could shift your perspective on how you manage it? If you want to change your thoughts to change your results, consider …
15 Secrets Successful People Know About Time Management: The Productivity Habits of 7 Billionaires, 13 Olympic Athletes, 29 Straight-A Students, and 239 Entrepreneurs by Kevin Kruse
#9 Multitasking is overrated and actually unhealthy. It’s been proven to reduce productivity and it’s bad for brain health. Your brain can only focus on one thing at a time. Multitasking has been shown to not only slow down your performance, but it also lowers your IQ. Research is ongoing to determine whether it’s actually causing permanent changes to the brain. How would your life and business change if you decided to focus on just one thing at a time? To discover more, consider …
The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results Hardcover by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan
#10 Do you ever notice that you tend to work to fill the time allotted? What if you got crystal clear on your goals and re-oriented your perspective to accomplish in less time. By prioritizing your clearly defined goals, measuring success more frequently and compressing your time for quicker execution, you can change your results. This isn’t groundbreaking, but changing your perspective on how much you can accomplish in shorter periods of time, can change your outcomes. If you find this concept interesting, you might enjoy reading …
The 12 Week Year: Get More Done in 12 Weeks Than Others Do in 12 Months by Brian P. Moran