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Time Management

Successful Habits Of Billionaires

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Successful habits of billionaires, olympians, and entrepreneurs
Learn how to be productive from incredibly successful people.

Learning a few successful habits can improve the quality of your life. Interviews with more than 200 highly successful people, conducted by Kevin Kruse, revealed several repeating themes that might be guides for others aiming for success. He talked with billionaires, Olympians and a selection of entrepreneurs. The question was simple: “What is your number one secret to productivity?” The most consistent answers included the following:

Successful Habits

Many people look to their family, friends or mentors to learn successful habits. It’s better to learn from the experts.

Time Management

There are 1,440 minutes in a day and nothing is more valuable than time. Time spent can never be reclaimed. Most people block out one-and-a-half hour segments of time. Olympic gymnast Shannon Miller told Kruse that her schedule is almost minute-by-minute. Mastering minutes means mastering life.

Focus On One Thing At A Time

Identify the most important task ahead of you, the one that will have the greatest impact on reaching your goal, and work on it without interruption. Dedicate your morning, when you are most productive, to that objective.

To-Do List

Only 41 percent of what’s on the to-do list actually gets done, according to research. Those unfinished talks lead to stress and insomnia and occupy your mind until they’re done. Put items on your calendar and then work by the calendar in the order that is most feasible.

Predicting Future Success

You can’t trust your future self. Most of us are time inconsistent. For instance, we load up on fresh veggies anticipating salads for a week, then throw away the rotting mush before the week is up. Do what you can do right now to. Look ahead and see what you can do now to defeat your future self.

Family Time

Successful people include family time, exercise and health time and time for giving back. There is always at least one more thing to do, so know where you can draw the line. Think about where your priorities lie and allocate time to what you think is most important. Don’t allow work to nudge out the more important things.

Journaling

Richard Branson, who built Virgin, says a simple notebook goes with him everywhere. That’s a “million dollar lesson” they don’t teach in business school, said Aristotle Onassis, Greek shipping executive. Writing down things as they occur to you leaves your mind free to think of other things.

Manage Emails

Process emails a few times a day. Don’t feel obligated to respond to every vibration that ends up in your inbox. Schedule time to respond to emails quickly and efficiently and then leave them to the next session.

Protect Your Time

The advice of Mark Cuban is “Never take meetings unless someone is writing a check.” Meetings tend to start late, have the wrong mix of people, meander around topics and run long. Avoid them if possible. If it is necessary and you can influence the proceedings, made them short and to the point.

Learn To Say “No”

Remember that old 1,440 minutes thing. Trying to respond to every request for your time will use them up in a hurry. Screen your time and protect the minutes.

Pareto Principle

The reality that 80 percent of results come from 20 percent of activities. Those who succeed best learn which activities drive the greatest results and stick with them, ignoring the rest.

Delegate

Take the “I” out of the equation whenever you can. The question should be “How can I get this task done?” not “How can I perform this task?” The successful don’t get bound up in control issues and they don’t micro-manage.

Touch Things Once

Picking up a bill then setting it aside without handling it means you have given twice the time to the same objective. Try the “touch it once” approach. Deal with everything when it arises, if possible. You can then free your mind from that particular chore.

Use A Morning Routine

Many of the people Kevin interviewed shared a consistent morning routine. The successful habits varied, but repeat suggestions included a good breakfast, light exercise and mind soothers such as meditation, prayer, inspirational reading or journaling. Over the day, maintain your energy level. Don’t skip meals, sleep or breaks in an effort to fill more time with productive work. Food is fuel, sleep an opportunity for recovery and breaks the way to recharge periodically.

Use Your Time Productively

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Tips to effectively manage your time.
Tips to effectively manage your time.
Six ways to make your time more effective:

Don’t touch things twice

If you have a note to make a phone call, make the call. Don’t save emails to deal with later. Although there could be exceptions, right now is almost always the best time to act. Picking things up twice demands that you go through the same thought process twice, and that uses up your time.

Eat frogs

In other words, do the least appetizing things on your list first. Using up time dreading awful tasks instead of getting them done is a waste of time. The thing is still there waiting. Doing the tasks that are distasteful removes them from the list of things you have to think about. It frees you to tackle the things you like.

If possible, delegate “the urgent” to others

If that can’t be done, take care of them yourself right now. Don’t let the “tyranny of the urgent” get in the way of what really matters. Either delete or delegate them as quickly as possible so you can get on with what is more important. The first trick, of course, is to recognize those items that can be listed under “urgent.”

Say no

It’s one of the most powerful tools you can wield. Don’t equivocate with terms such as “I don’t think I can” or “I’m not certain.” You owe your first allegiance to your existing commitments. Researchers at the University of California in San Francisco determined that those who overload themselves experience more stress and depression. Turning down excessive requests can save your mood and your productivity.

Check emails on a schedule

Don’t allow it to become a constant interruption. Use your computer’s ability to prioritize messages and then set alert when messages come from your most important vendors or customers. Save the rest of your emails until the time you have set aside for them. It is possible to set up an autoresponder that will tell senders when you will be checking your emails again.

Avoid multitasking

Although it would appear to make good sense to do more than one thing at a time, it really can reduce your productivity. Researchers at Stanford found that trying to do more than one task takes a toll in attention and recall and wastes time as you switch from one task to another. The brain can focus on only one thing at a time, so concentrating on just one thing is more efficient.