6 Productivity Secrets from Self-made Billionaires

What do the world’s most successful people have in common when it comes to managing their day while remaining productive?  They control what that they get done.  Business Optimizer looks at how billionaires manage to achieve their best and analyses the surprising commonalities in their productivity tips.

Forbes contributor and business writer Kevin Kruse has interviewed many successful business people during his career.  Over that time, Kruse realised that many of the traits and productivity techniques these self-made millionaires and billionaires espouse are shared across the group.

As a result of this realisation, Kruse developed a downloadable one-page tool which helps regular people to plan their day like a billionaire!

Kruse’s recommendations

According to the author, “The common traits of self-made millionaires and highly successful people show that they invest in themselves as their first priority, carefully allocate their daily minutes to align with their values and goals, and know that taking time at night to rest and recharge is a wise decision.”

The 6 essential tips are:

• Invest the first 30 to 60 minutes of the day in boosting your body and mind; whether yoga, exercise, gratitude meditation or mission reflection (or a combination!).
• Be clear about your number one priority and schedule time every day in order to work towards it.
• Ideally, dedicate uninterrupted morning hours to your main priority.
• Eliminate unnecessary meetings and keep necessary meetings short.
• Don’t check your email or social media accounts throughout the day; dedicate specific short blocks of time to that purpose.
• Ensure your working day has a “hard stop” so you have time afterwards to relax.

Name your “most important task”

Kruse emphasises the need to understand your own priorities and make time for them – whether that is health, family or a particular work goal.  While most of us think that multi-tasking is a sign of productivity, he argues this isn’t an approach favoured by the most successful people.

Instead, self-made millionaires and billionaires are rigorous about the time they dedicate to specific tasks.  This is something Bill Gates has spoken about in the past.  Cal Newport, a Georgetown professor and author, says the type of “deep work” approach favoured by the Microsoft founder is the reason Gates had such a remarkable rise to success.

The approach, which Newport explains in his “Deep Work” book, is defined as the “professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit, [which then] create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to duplicate.”

But deep work isn’t the same as hard work, according to Newport, “Rather it’s about understanding how — more than ever in the age of constant internet connectivity — perpetual distractions threaten to limit our potential and minimize the impact of our work.”

Gates and other successful people will happily block of extended periods of time during which they accept no distractions and focus single-mindedly on achieving their most important task.

Need further examples?  Read how Elon Musk favours a similar deep working approach.