Are you spending your day in the most productive and efficient manner possible?

If you’re like most people, the answer is no. While most of us have every intention of spending our time primarily on those tasks that will result in the most income or happiness, we usually end up devoting our attention to problems and distractions.

The 80/20 rule can serve as a great reminder of what is most important.

According to the 80/20 rule, a small percentage(20%) of your activities account for the majority (80%) of your outputs and results. This, of course, is a rough guide. Sometimes it’s closer to 90/10. Other times, 70/30, but the principle holds true for most things in life.

How Does The 80/20 Rule Work?

In the early 1900s, Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto observed that 80 percent of income in Italy went to 20 percent of the population. Since that time, many business thinkers have observed that this principle – now known as Pareto’s Principle or the 80-20 Rule – holds true for many business activities.

With everything you do, only about 20 percent of it is vital and 80 percent of it is trivial. This can be applied in many ways such as:

• Roughly 20 percent of your clients will account for 80 percent of your profits. Think about those clients who not only hired you but referred business to you.
  
  
• 20 percent of your daily activities will account for 80 percent of your business’ success. Think about all the time you spend actively getting and working with clients vs. answering e-mail, surfing the web, lunch and coffee breaks, waiting for the phone to ring, etc.
  
  
• 20 percent of a project (the first 10 percent and the last 10 percent) consumes 80 percent of your time and resources.
  
  
• 20 percent of your inputs produce 80 percent of your outputs.

The Power of Focus

To be more productive and grow your business faster, identify and focus on the 20 percent that matters. Look for the places where you can get the maximum result. What activities should you be focusing on?

When you have focus, you know what it is you should be doing to maximize the best use of your time and resources. That allows you to optimize your efforts to produce the best results as quickly and efficiently as possible.

When you have a clear, accurate vision of what you want to accomplish, you are motivated to overcome obstacles that hold you back – like procrastination or paralysis by analysis, when you over-think problems rather than take action – and you can recognize opportunities you see that might be a better solution.

The post Prioritize Your Time with the 80/20 Rule appeared first on Morningstar Marketing Coach.

Do you open your email to find an endless stream of spam? If so, here are 7 easy ways to cut back or even block spam emails.

1. Create a throwaway email address. Yahoo Mail and Gmail are both great alternatives to using your work or personal email address on the web. Both have “junk mail” or “spam” folders that catch a considerable portion of unwanted messages. I’ve started forwarding my work email to my Gmail account because the spam filter is so much better than what I was previously using.
   
   
2. Create email filters. Virtually all email applications have an option to create filters that automatically send email with subject lines like “make money” or “viagra” to the trash. While you won’t block all of them this way, you can cut back on subject lines you get repeatedly.
   
   
3. Use “block sender” filters. Microsoft Outlook allows you to click on an email and set up a filter to block the sender. This can be effective if you repeatedly get spam from the same email address.
   
   
4. Never post your email address online. Avoid posting your email address on websites, message boards, blog comments, guest books, and social media sites. Spammers use software programs to extract email addresses from millions of websites. If you really want to display your email address, type your email address into an image design software program like Photoshop and save it as a gif or jpg. Spammers may be good, but they usually can’t extract email addresses from images.
   
   
5. Try Spam Arrest. For a few bucks a month, you can sign up for Spam Arrest. The service provides you with a special email address to use that blocks virtually all automated emails. You can protect your existing accounts by forwarding them to your Spam Arrest email and eliminating about 90% of your junk mail.
   
   
6. Never respond to spam. Some spam message provide you with a link to opt-out or reply to the email to “unsubscribe.” Don’t respond. Spammers use these techniques to check if the email address is legitimate.
   
   
7. Never open attachments. If you receive a file with the spam message, don’t open it. Most times, this is some type of virus that can harm your computer. Even if you receive an exe or zip file from your friends or business colleagues, make sure to scan the document with your anti-virus software before you open it. If you have a Yahoo or Gmail account, they will automatically scan attachments for you.

Blocking spam emails is an ongoing task. Every time you think you’ve made progress, spammers come up with a new way to get around filters to deliver unwanted junk mail. By following these seven steps, you can cut back on the amount of spam you receive.

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Author: Brian Tracy
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Year Published: 2002
Rating:
Buy From Amazon.com

When it comes to personal time management, few of us are experts. There’s always something we don’t have time to do or put off until later. Maybe it’s because something else is more important or more urgent. Maybe it’s because we just don’t want to do it. Regardless, some things just don’t get done.

In Eat That Frog, Brian Tracy provides 21 methods and techniques to help you prioritize your “to-do” list and overcome procrastination so you improve your overall level of productivity and performance. The title comes from an old saying

It has been said for many years that if the first thing you do each morning is to eat a live frog, you can go though the day with the satisfaction of knowing that that is probably the worst thing that is going to happen to you all day long.

In terms of personal productivity, your “frog” is your biggest, most important task that is absolutely critical for you to get done – and the task you are most likely to procrastinate on if you don’t take action now. It sounds easy. Every morning, look over your to-do list and find the biggest task that will yield the most positive benefits if you complete it now – and do it! So why don’t we?

Tracy explains that “failure to execute” is one of the biggest problems organizations face. People know they should execute. They’ve planned it, held meetings about it, analyzed it – just about everything but actually doing it. According to Tracy, this is because we have bad time management habits and if we could just overcome those, we’d be more inclined to get things done. We’re patterned to feel a surge of enthusiasm and happiness upon completion of a task – we want to get things done and be more productive – so we should cultivate habits of decision, discipline, and determination.

This 125 page book is comprise of 21 chapters, each 3-5 pages and focused on a particular task or idea that will help you hone your time management skills. Each chapter ends with an “Eat That Frog” assignment so you can apply the principles to your real world to-do list. The book is more a motivational tool than a complete system. Each chapter stands alone as a quick tip you could focus on today if you need a cheerleader to help you complete your task.

The chapters are focused on the three habits Tracy is encouraging you to develop: decision, discipline, and determination. Those that excel in life and get things done faster are clear about what they want and set goals and objectives they strive to achieve.

The more clear you are about what you want and what you have to do to achieve it, the easier it is for you to overcome procrastination, eat your frog, and get on with the completion of the task.

He explains that only about 3% of adults have clear, written goals and those people accomplish 5-10 times more than those who don’t and offers a seven step formula for setting and achieving your goals:

1. decide exactly what you want
2. write it down
3. set a deadline on your goal
4. make a list of everything you can think of that you are going to have to do to achieve your goal
5. organize the list into a plan
6. take action on your plan immediately
7. resolve to do something every single day that moves you towards your major goal.

Simple, right? Fortunately, the 20 tips that follow offer suggestions and ways to keep you on track to achieve your goals.

After reading the book, I was psyched to get stuff done, so for me at least, it did what it set out to accomplish. I was buzzing with ideas to put into place immediately. Still, I’m the kind of gal that thinks logically rather than emotionally, so I’m more inclined to agree with Steve Pavlina’s recent post about setting goals you’ll actually achieve than I am with this type of motivational cheerleading that quickly dies down after a day or two.

The book is also probably more valuable if you’ve read Tracy’s Goals or David Allen’s Get Things Done (both of which I highly recommend) as those books offer a systematic approach to time management rather than a bunch of related quick tips. Still, this is a great book to keep by your desk to give you that quick jolt of enthusiasm to start that big, ugly task rather than putting it off until later.

The post Book Review: Eat That Frog! appeared first on Morningstar Marketing Coach.

Author: Publisher: Penguin Books
Year Published: 2003
Rating:
Buy From Amazon.com

If you’ve ever looked at your to-do list, realized there was no way you’d accomplish everything on it, and felt a wave of anxiety wash over you, then Getting Things Done by David Allen is for you. The book provides a systematic approach for how you can be more organized and efficient and more importantly, less stressed about what you need to accomplish.

If you’re like me, you have a million projects going on and lots of little things you need to keep track of. Those to-do tasks pop into your head at inopportune times – like when you’re in the middle of something and can’t do anything about them – and stress you out with a nagging reminder that you forgot to do this or that project you haven’t started is due in 2 hours.

The best thing about Getting Things Done is that the underlying principles are so simple and easy to put in place. Instead of dealing with calendars, ‘ABC’ priorities, and long to-do lists, you focus on two objectives:

1. Get everything out of your head and into a system you trust
2. Deciding what the next step is to completing the task

As Allen states,

The vast majority of people have been trying to get organized by rearranging incomplete lists of unclear things; they haven’t yet realized how much and what they need to organize in order to get the real payoff. They need to gather everything that requires thinking about and then do that thinking if their organizational efforts are to be successful.

Getting organized is as simple as following these 5 steps:

1. Collect – Gather everything that you need to do, can do, might do, or may want to do at some point in the future into one place
   
   
2. Process – Think about what each item or task in your collection bin means and then figure out what the very next step you must do to complete the action is
   
   
3. Organize – Set up physical locations (project lists, calendars, file systems, etc) to store all your stuff so you can find it when you need it
   
   
4. Review – Look over your organization systems to remind yourself what needs done, add anything new that creeps up in, and to keep the system in check.
   
   
5. Do – Determine what would be the best use of your time based on context, time available, energy available, and priority.

I’ve never been a fan of time management systems. In theory, they sound good, but they’ve never worked for me. I cringe at the idea of blocking out specific dates and times where I will complete each task. And throwing everything on a to-do list just made me anxious because I knew I’d never accomplish everything.

Yet, this system works for me. After 2 solid days of collecting everything, figuring out what I had to do with it, and filing away stuff I didn’t need, I’ve been much less stressed and know exactly what I need to accomplish. Now, whenever I think of something new to do or my mind can’t stop thinking about something, I add that task to my system. Simple. Easy. And it’s out of my head so I no longer need to worry.

The book is set up in three parts. Part 1 outlines the theory behind the system and what it will take to regain control over your workload. Part 2 provides hands-on chapters that walk you through each of the five steps. These chapters assume you’re creating your system as you’re reading the book, so they’re focused on the practicalities of setting up the system and implementing each phase. Part 3 discusses some of the long term benefits he and his clients have experienced from using the system.

Allen writes in a conversational tone, with pull out quotes and key takeaways on most pages. He also includes flow charts, lists, frequently asked questions and ways of overcoming personal objections that may creep up.

Overall, this is a wonderful book for anyone who feels overwhelmed or frustrated with their workload. It’s full of practical, straightforward advice that you can start implementing today – without any special gadgets or organizers. And though much of the advice is common sense, you’ll increase your productivity and find your life less stressful by implementing his system.

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