In our world today, we all are trying to be more productive, but we don’t have a roadmap to find the right path to achieve it.
How do you achieve it? Here are 5 rules I am going to share which keep me productive in plenty of tough times where I lose interest in taking my work/habits forward. But following these rules helped me a lot and stick to being productive.
I already shared these rules in bits and pieces in all my posts and this one will be a consolidation of all.
Let’s get started.
2-day Rule
If you want to build a robust habit, then try to include the “Two-day” rule in it.
Sometimes you won’t have enough willpower to hit the gym, or you’ll be too tired to wake up early in the morning (not for you night owl) or you are not in the mood to finish your daily book goal of 10 pages per day. It’s all right if you are not able to do it and you don’t need to feel guilty about it.
You can skip that day when you’re not willing/able to do any of your habits. And it’s completely fine to skip a day but for the very next day, you should not skip.
Just show up the very next day and do it no matter how hard it looks for you. To the minimum go to the gym and be there for at least 5 minutes, read 1 page instead of 10 pages, and keep your alarm on the other side of the room – you’ll wake up at least to turn it off but don’t ever think about skipping the second day.
That’s it as simple as its name “2-day rule”. This way you are not too strict on your habits, and you can also take a rest from your habit when needed.
80/20 – Pareto principle
For example 80% of crimes are done by 20% of criminals,
You take any of your tasks – 80% of major results come from 20% of your work, and vice versa (the rest of 20% results go to 80% of your work).
Once you’re done with the priority tasks, which will be 20% of your entire task list. But completing 20% of those tasks will result in 80% of the impact you can create for that day.
For a YouTuber, once he writes the script and shoots the video – it takes 20% time and 80% output done, and when coming to editing where it is going to take his 80% time and add 20% to output. So, he can outsource the editing alone to a freelancer and he can use that time to script a new video.
That makes sense right!
Try to find the 20% priority work wherever it is possible and get it done first, here your time is substantially rewarded as it contributes more value (80%) to your work (20%).
Then you can go for the remaining 80% of work (which has only 20% results) or you can outsource it.
1% Rule
The rule is about consistency not winning, you must take one little step towards your goal every single day.
My blog is created with a 1% rule strategy, it took me 4 months to bring my site live on the web.
I knew nothing about creating a website. Somehow, I made it up with 120 single steps which include buying a domain from day one, watching tutorials, setting up a mailer, designing the pages, knowing about plugins, SEO, etc.
No considerable progress was seen until it was live on the internet, but my blog was getting 1% better day by day.
Over a long time, all your single little steps are compounded; if you focus on getting better 1% every day, at the end of the year you would be 37 times better than before.
Hereafter, take a few INRs from your every paycheck and put it in savings, and read 10 pages of a book every day. Push yourself for that 1% each day to make the compounding work on your habits.
3-year Rule
If you’re a person like me, one who changes his niche every 3 to 4 months. The 3-year rule suits more people like us.
First, I was focused on fitness for a few months, after that, I was interested in affiliate marketing, then personal finance, blogging, and the list goes on. I was not constant in one domain, jumping from one thing to another.
In 3 months, we never get to know what works for you and what does not. But we concluded within 90 days that this is not working for me, I am going to quit! This shows we are expecting things to happen overnight.
So, pick one thing, be consistent in it and give yourself three years of buffer time before changing your niche. And be one of those rare people who don’t know how to quit.
I gave myself three years’ time to fail on my blog, until that I must post consistently and should not quit/change my interests before that. The year mentioned is arbitrary, it can be anything 2, 3, 5, or 10 years depending on your choice but let’s just call it the 3-year rule.
Of course, things don’t work like that. If over the course of three years you don’t find any measurable gains, you can have permission to call it off. But it won’t happen mostly if you’re working your butt off.
5-minute Rule
Just tell this to yourself when you are not able to start any of your work, which is “I am going to do the work for the next 5-minutes alone not even a second after that”. Try it, this really works.
Say to yourself, I will read this book for 5 minutes alone, I’ll be in the gym for 5 minutes alone, I’ll clean my room for 5-minutes alone.
The beginning is always tough, and your brain won’t allow you to start. So, the 5-minute rule eases your mind and makes it looks like a small task thinking you’re going to do it only for 5 mins.
And the beauty is you won’t stop after 5 minutes, you’ll end up doing the whole thing.
I am not in the mood to write this post on a Sunday morning, but I said to myself “For the next 5 minutes – I’m just going to write the intro alone for this post ”. It didn’t stop there, I continued till the last passage of this post which you’re reading now. But it all started with the intro which I said I’ll do only for 5 minutes.
You can couple the “5-minute” rule with the “2-day” rule to get the work done on the second day (the day after you skipped ).
These are the five rules that helped me to keep productive, hope they might help you as well.
Bye for now,
Peranesh xx
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