Michael Hyatt's Blog, page 12

4 Essential Tools for Achieving More in Less Time

You’ve set ambitious goals for the year. To achieve them, you will need to equip your team with tools to operate as productively and creatively as possible. 

At Michael Hyatt & Company, we have found it critical to streamline our processes and maintain maximum efficiency as we expand. Doing this intentionally will boost your bottom line, as well as help your team maintain the work-life balance they need to sustain their high productivity long term. 

Over the years, my team and I have tried several methods for doing this. After quite a bit of testing, we’ve landed on 4 tools that make a substantial difference. 

Asana. As our team grew, we needed a project management tool to manage our long-term projects in a streamlined way across multiple departments. We’ve used Asana for several years now, and it continues to be extremely effective. It saves quite a bit of time, as everyone on the team knows who is responsible for each area of a project and sees their goals broken down into actionable steps with clear due dates.Slack. One of the constant struggles my clients bring up is the amount of time they spend sorting and responding to emails. That’s why, at Michael Hyatt & Company, we’ve switched to Slack for internal communication. It essentially incorporates instant messaging, email, and file sharing all in one place, and allows our team to effectively collaborate on projects even in a remote work environment. Over the years I have tried other similar tools, but ultimately found Slack the best for working efficiently.BackBlaze. Backblaze is a cloud-based computer backup system that runs each day to ensure that your computer is backed up without you needing to manually do it. Once you set it up, it runs in the background. Let’s face it, technology fails sometimes, and without this in place you can lose all of your hard work and waste countless hours getting back up to speed. Full Focus Planner. In order for high achievers to keep track of their goals and make steady, incremental progress, you need a tool designed just for you. That’s where the Full Focus Planner comes in. It facilitates goal tracking and review and enables you to prioritize your tasks so that you maintain momentum. 

Help your team reach their highest potential without sacrificing their work-life balance. With the right tools in place you can achieve more with less time. 

 

I’ve made it! Now what?

You’ve earned  the promotion and the respect of your peers. To the people around you, you’ve “made it.” But lately, you feel like you’re coasting, or maybe idling in place. And you have a nagging feeling that there must be something more out there. 

 

 

4 Strategies to Help Your Team Be More Productive

You’ve put together the dream team of employees. They are excited, engaged, and passionate about their work. Sustaining this level of energy to achieve challenging goals year after year means you must make work-life balance a priority for your team.

Your employees become the heart of your organization. Your success is driven by your team. When employees see that their organization values their overall well-being, they will be more likely to stay engaged and committed. 

According to a study by the Corporate Executive Board, it was found that people who felt happy with their work-life balance worked 21% harder and were 33% more likely to stay with their organization. 

So, what are some practical ways that you can help your employees achieve a better work-life balance? Here are 4 strategies.

Be flexible. There are countless ways to offer more flexibility for your team—a generous paid vacation plan, a flexible schedule, or the opportunity to work remotely. Flexibility in any of these areas shows your employees that you care about them and builds mutual trust.Encourage exercise. Studies show that exercise enhances mental clarity and the ability to think the most efficiently and creatively. You could be partnering with a local gym to offer your employees a discounted membership or creating a fitness challenge at work. Your employees will find themselves feeling more energized and better able to perform. It’s a win-win. Set limits for your team. Create an Ideal Week for your team that provides uninterrupted time for deep work, team meetings, limits on expected response times, and so on. Keep in mind that most knowledge workers are the most productive for six hours a day. Here at Michael Hyatt & Company we offer a 30-hour work week for that very reason. We’re more productive than ever before.Offer opportunities to learn. The best leaders know that we are all continually growing and learning. Conferences, internal trainings, or mentor programs are valuable tools that can help your team reach their highest potential. 

Leaders set the tone for their workplace. It will pay to create a work culture that values work-life balance. Your employees will be more rested, productive, and creative if you do. Which of these strategies can you start now?

 

The Trait That Destroys Any Team—And Its Antidote

There’s an unhealthy attitude forming on your team. Requests are consistently met with grumbling—even an occasional outright, “That’s not my job.” Where is this attitude coming from? And how do you counter it before it derails your team’s growth and success?

 

The Key to Performing at Your Best

Your energy and your attitude drive your success. In order to accomplish your demanding goals year after year, you have to protect your health and relationships. In doing so, you free up your mind to do your most productive and creative work. 

There are activities that you do that create a more enriching life outside of your achievement at work—that’s self-care. As the pressure mounts at work and your to-do list grows, these activities are often the first to get cut out of your days. 

Some examples of daily self-care habits that I recommend include: sleeping enough, eating well, exercising regularly, connecting with the people we love, engaging in meaningful hobbies, and making time for personal reflection. Sometimes these things feel like they aren’t worth it because there isn’t a set way to measure their value. But if you pay attention, you will notice how they affect your overall attitude, energy, and performance. 

Benefits of Making Time for Self-Care

How many of you have found that you feel like you must choose between your health or relationships and winning at work? I know I did for years. But the benefits of self-care actually contribute to better performance at work. 

Here are three key benefits of prioritizing self-care that will drive your success at work as well. 

You will have more energy and be more productive. Your brain is not designed to be working all day. In fact, some studies have shown that the opposite is true. One study even showed that with 50 hours of work, only 37 of those were productive. Your brain is designed to need breaks.

It’s not that your brain “turns off” but rather by focusing on something else it is able to work more efficiently when it is back on the problem at hand.

As a result, you will get more done by working smarter. This means working in blocks of concentrated time with built-in breaks and rest.

2. You will be more creative. There are countless studies on the benefits of sleep, exercise, and even fun for the brain. Each of these allows your brain to function more effectively. What does this mean for your work?

I have found that when I am making each of these practices a priority, my most creative and innovative ideas are born. Why? Because rather than operating at a deficit, my body is fueled and able to break through problems more easily.

3. You protect yourself from burnout. When you get to the bottom of it, one of the main problems with the hustle fallacy or overwork, is that it is not sustainable. Sure you can put in extra hours during a particular crisis or problem at work. You can’t do it long term. According to a 2012 study in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, not getting enough sleep is a primary risk factor in developing burnout,.

It’s time to reflect on your week. Do you have time built in for the self-care habits that will enable you to achieve more? If not, what changes can you make immediately to factor in these crucial activities?

Why Your Future Self is Key to Goal Achievement

You started out the new year excited about your goals, but now you find yourself lagging. You’re tired and your motivation is waning. You’re starting to wonder, How do I keep going? The answer? Focus on your future self. 

 

Take Back Control of Your Schedule

There are a fixed number of hours in the day. If you don’t intentionally plan out how you are going to spend them, they will inevitably be filled by the needs of others. After years of allowing my time to be almost completely filled by work, I realized I needed margin. Now I use my Ideal Week to make the most of my time and increase my productivity. 

Early in my career I fell for the myth that working countless hours would allow me to grind it out and get ahead. Research shows us that the opposite is true. According to a study out of Stanford University, productivity declines considerably when you work more than 50 hours per week. 

I have found the struggle of overwork to be true for countless clients and colleagues as well. Driven to succeed, their calendars have been filled with obligations and meetings leaving no time to recharge and re-energize. Not only that but relationships and healthy habits have also been sacrificed to meet the demands placed on their schedules. 

The solution is to put boundaries in place to prevent overwork. The first step is to start with your Ideal Week. By intentionally planning out and thinking through your week and the why behind it, your colleagues are more likely to respect the boundaries you have put in place.  

Creating an Ideal Week and sharing it with those around you—your spouse, assistant, coworkers, boss—allows you to proactively plan out when you can do your work that makes the greatest impact on your business. It shows you are not just saying no and leaving things undone. You are carving out intentional time to allow all of your goals and business’s priorities to be met. 

Steps to Creating Your Ideal Week

In order for this system to be effective for planning out your week, you need to think of your time in three ways: achievement, nonachievement, and rest. I also have a theme for each day of the week so that I know how to prioritize the blocks of time for each day. 

Create your template. You can either do this digitally or on paper. Our Full Focus Planner also includes a template for you to use. List out your weekly activities and goals. As you create your list, you will see themes emerge. I recommend grouping your activities into batches. This will allow you to maximize your productivity.Design your week. Assign a theme for each day. Determine a specific time when you will start and end work. Include time for your morning and evening rituals as well as your workday startup and shutdown routines. Schedule your top priorities in blocks of time within the work-day constraints you set. It’s best to plan to do these at the times of day that are most productive for you personally. Next, schedule your other to-do list items that must be done by filling in around your priority work. I recommend also scheduling how you will spend your non-achievement time. For many of us, this is how we would ideally want to spend our evenings and weekends. Set intentional rest times. No one can perform at their best without enough sleep.Review and adapt. Remember, this system is intended to work for you. It’s meant to be flexible and change as your needs do. Allow yourself the freedom to make changes as you go until it feels like the right fit for you. Also, remember that you won’t be able to control all aspects of your Ideal Week. Having something to plan toward helps keep you on better track, even if it’s not perfect.Share your schedule with those around you. In order for your Ideal Week to actually happen, you must share it with those closest to you. Your spouse, colleagues, and so on. This will help them to understand your goals and when you are available for collaboration. 

By intentionally planning out your activities using an Ideal Week template, you can regain control of your time and increase your productivity. 

 

The Non-Negotiable Requirement for Growth

Leadership is an exercise in vulnerability. The idea that leaders enter every situation full of confidence and assurance isn’t just false. It’s harmful. In reality, every good leader has one non-negotiable trait: they have developed a capacity for discomfort.

 

Free Yourself from Overwork

Have you ever found that no matter how many hours you put in, it never seems to be enough? For most of us, as we feel stress or pressure at work, we put in more hours. This hustle fallacy is a widespread belief in our culture—if we just work harder, put in more hours, and grind a little harder, we can get ahead. 

And yet, it seems that the demands outpace our hustle. This cycle is one that comes at a high cost. Overwork can hurt our relationships, our health, and the quality of our work. According to a Gallup study, nearly two-thirds of full-time employees experience burnout in their job.

If we know that overwork doesn’t actually get us the results we want, why do we continue to do it? Sometimes high achievers don’t know how to stop. There is a joke among the team at Michael Hyatt & Co. that we are all recovering workaholics. We all help hold each other accountable to resisting the hustle fallacy. So, how do we do it?

In order to break the cycle of the hustle fallacy, we must first address the why behind our actions. It starts with freeing ourselves from the misconceptions that lead to overwork in the first place. 

5 Reasons We Overwork and How to Free Yourself from Them

Here are five of the primary reasons people fall into the trap of the hustle fallacy. These mindsets are often ideas that we don’t even realize are actively driving us. I want to challenge you to replace these thoughts with a new way of viewing life. 

Work-life balance is a myth. This idea is one that I hear frequently. In our culture, people view it as unachievable. And yet, I’m here to tell you it is possible. In fact, it’s the foundation Michael Hyatt & Co. is built on. I call it the Double Win. In order to experience it for yourself, you have to let yourself believe it can be done. Work provides the primary orientation for life . It’s easy to see why this viewpoint is so prevalent. Work is necessary to provide for yourself and your family when it comes to financial security. It can also become a measuring stick by which we determine how successful we are. If you truly want work-life balance, you have to equally prioritize both. Consider your goals in all of the domains of your life. Constraints stifle productivity. Research actually shows us that constraints enhance productivity and creativity. Rather than resisting the natural boundaries of time, energy, and so on. Lean into them. Having a vision script for your life is key to determining which opportunities to pursue and which are not actually a priority. You should always be busy.  We almost wear busyness as a badge of honor. How many times have you been asked how you are doing and find yourself proudly responding with the details of how busy you are? Instead, intentionally create margin in your day and your week to allow for activities that bring your life more fulfillment. This is why I use the Ideal Week to help plan out my schedule. Rest wastes time that could otherwise go to work. Except it’s been proven that sleep is key to performing at your best. Sleep often suffers first when we find ourselves overworked. When you are rested, that is when you find you are able to do your most creative, productive work. 

If you find yourself overworked, reflect on what thoughts are driving you. You can escape from the hustle fallacy and free yourself to live a more balanced and fulfilling life. It all begins with changing your mindset. 

How to Handle Dissent and Disagreement in Your Organization

Dissent isn’t comfortable, no matter which end you’re on. But it’s essential. Companies that don’t welcome dissent are in danger of falling headlong into damaging situations that would have been avoidable—if only someone had mustered the courage to speak up.