How I doubled my productivity

As most entrepreneurs I’m obsessed with being more productive.

I always ask myself: how can I get more stuff done in less time and with less effort?

I wish there was a button to accomplish everything I wanted…

Need awesome healthy meal delivered to my mouth – Press Button 1

Need laundry done – Press Button 2

Press Button 3 – new fancy, trendy, colorful socks appear on my feet

Button 4 – beard shaved

Button 5 – amazing sexy haircut done!

Button 6 – all my life’s problems solved

Button 7 – complete and utter happiness and two trillion zillion dollars in my bank account

Button 8 – super fluffy kitty purring on my lap, prrrrrr prrr prrr

… you get the idea

So far, I’ve only managed to program a button that plays the song “The Final Countdown by Europe” on Spotify thanks to Flic.io, a company that sells super nerdy programmable wireless buttons.

I’m working on the other tasks and I’m sure one day Flic,io, Google or Skynet will figure them out…

But in the meantime, how did I double my productivity?

It’s called R.A.D – remember that, remember RAD!

Stands for Reduce, Automate, Delegate.

You can apply it to everything in life.

It works best for repetitive tasks like dealing with email.

I’ve applied it to dealing with my email and for the last 5 years I’ve reached zero inbox EVERY DAY… boom!

The framework is pretty self-explanatory (as it should be).

REDUCE – if you are not being productive is because you are spending too much time on tasks that are not helping you get stuff done so… get rid of them!

– Too much email? turn off notifications, unsubscribe from everything, consolidate all your inboxes into one, use Unroll.me…

– Too much time spend in Quadrant 3*? Turn off Facecrack, NetFlix, PornHub, etc.. you know the drill.

AUTOMATE – we live in awesome times and thanks to technology we can get computers to do almost anything we want – even drive cars for us (but we may need to wait a bit more for that to be 100% glitch free, right Elon?)

Ok, not everything can be automated but clever tools are helping us get there.

Use Zappier or IFTTT to connect apps and reduce repetitive tasks.

Use GMail smart filters to automatically categorize your emails, reply to them or delegate them.

Talking about delegating…

DELEGATE – Delegate anything that cannot be automated with software.

Get a Virtual Assistant to deal with administrative tasks like booking flights, hotels, restaurants, bookkeeping, managing your email, doing research, etc.

If you are running a business and want to grow it, learning to delegate will be one of the most useful skills you can develop.

In fact, if you don’t learn to delegate you won’t be able to grow your business pass the amount of work you can do… and there is only so much one person can do.

Must-read book on this topic is called the E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber.

And of course the classic Getting Things Done by David Allen.

Was this useful to you?

Now I just need another button that does this RAD thing for me and I would be set.

I know you are going to ask: But Miguel, if you can get everything you want with the push of a button, wouldn’t your life be super boring?

Of course not. Half of my day would be devoted to pressing buttons (that’s until someone came up with a button that would press all the buttons for me – the so call MOAB or Mother Of All Buttons)

… and the other half of my day? well of course, I would spend eating all the cookies in the world!!

Peace, Love and Button Cookies

Miguel

PS. if you could own a button that did anything you wanted when you pressed it, what would it do?

P2: Quadrant 3: information/tasks that are fun but useless (according to me).

P2. How do I apply RAD to reach zero inbox every day? I made a course on it HERE.