Your Ultimate Productivity Guide for the New Year

Most ambitious and successful people set goals and use task lists. I’ve seen those task lists. They’re usually handwritten on lined paper – pages and pages of “things to do” with no way to sort out what’s important.

I used to do that. But I was never able to accomplish my long-term goals that way.

I doubt those people do, either.

The time-management system I use now is more detailed. And it takes a bit more time. But it works. I mean it really works.

Prior to using this system, I was able to accomplish my main goal, which was about achieving wealth. But I was forever putting off my other life goals. Had I still been writing down yearly resolutions and daily task lists, I am sure I would have continued to add to my net worth. But I doubt I would have done much if any of the following:

  1. I wrote and had 30+ books published. (Two of them were New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestsellers.)
  2. I wrote four screenplays. Three were made into movies.
  3. I earned a black belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.
  4. I started a family charity that funded – and is running – a $5 million+ community development center in Nicaragua.
  5. I relearned the French horn.
  6. I developed several financial products and services that have helped many people achieve their financial goals. (I’m very proud of that.)
  7. I started a boutique publishing company that has produced books for unknown writers who I think deserve to be noticed.
  8. I am developing a 20-acre botanical palm tree and sculpture garden that I hope will one day be open to the public for free.
  9. I stayed healthy, kept my friends, and enjoyed my family.

As I said, before I began using this system, I never had time to write poetry or produce movies. I never had time to get involved with charitable endeavors. I was very busy. But my life was speeding by without any hope of being able to look back and think, “I did everything that was really important to me.”

Determining Your Core Values

Most people you meet on the street don’t like their jobs, are unhappy with their family life, and want more money. They believe that if they could just do this or that, everything would be better.

Winning the lottery would make it all okay. At least that’s what they think. But the truth is otherwise. Unless you live your life according to your core values, no success will be enough to bring you joy.

So before you attempt to set your goals, you have to spend some time determining your core values. What do I mean by core values? I mean the feelings you have about good and evil that are buried deep within your heart.

What does goal setting have to do with core values? It’s all about ensuring your long-term happiness. If you set goals that contradict your core values, you will wake up one day and say, “I did everything I said I wanted to do. But so what?”

You don’t want to end up being yet another highly successful but fundamentally miserable person – a fate so common it’s become a cliché. Here’s how to make sure that doesn’t happen…

Begin by imagining a funeral. It is taking place in an elegantly appointed room. The room is full of friends and family members who have assembled to talk about the deceased. You look around. You begin to recognize faces. “Who is the deceased?” you wonder. You look at the casket. Good grief, it’s you!

So what are the people at your funeral saying about you?  READ MORE

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How Much Are You Worth?

A French woman, upon seeing Picasso in a Parisian restaurant, approached the great master and insisted that he put down his coffee and make a quick sketch of her. Graciously, Picasso obliged. When he was done, she took the drawing, put it in her handbag, and then pulled out her billfold.

“How much do I owe you?” she asked.

“$5,000,” was Picasso’s reply.

“$5,000? But it took you only three minutes!” she exclaimed.

“No,” Picasso answered. “It took me all my life.”

That’s how I feel about the work I do. My skills – as a marketer and small-business builder – are very valuable. If you want me to help you sell your products or grow your business, you can expect to pay me at least $2,000 an hour.

And that’s only if I have the time… the work time… left in my schedule. If you want me to work during my personal time – evenings or weekends or during my vacation – how much would it cost you? You don’t want to ask.

A wealthy businessman, who had been following my writing at ETR for years, had been trying to persuade me to help him grow his business. At one point he offered to pay me $50,000 to spend a weekend with him – plus “plenty more” if I agreed to provide ongoing support.

I graciously turned down his offer, and he had a hard time understanding why. “I’m offering to pay you $3,000 an hour,” he said.

That’s true. For 16 hours (two days’ work), $50,000 amounts to just a bit more than $3,000 an hour. But I didn’t want to do it, because he was asking me to give up my personal time – the time I spend with my family and friends and the time I spend on my hobbies. And that time is worth at least twice as much as my working time.

How to Calculate Your Hourly Worth

Now, let’s talk about you. Let’s talk about how to calculate what your time is worth.

Here’s the formula I use: Take the amount of money you earn per year. Then divide that by 50 weeks and then by 40 hours.

For example, my friend Walt has a growing real estate business. To convince him that he shouldn’t be doing so much of the grunt work himself, I helped him apply my formula to his situation.

Walt makes about $150,000 a year. $150,000 divided by 50 weeks equals $3,000 (his weekly income). $3,000 divided by 40 hours comes to $75.

“That’s how much your work time is worth,” I told him. “So never do anything yourself that you can have done for less than $75 a hour.”

Now you do it. Divide your yearly income by 50 weeks. Then divide that by 40 hours.

If the number you come up with is less than $50, it tells me you are not practicing a financially valuable skill – one that contributes to your company’s bottom line. That means being involved in product creation, marketing, sales, or profit management. If that’s the case, go back and reread past ETR messages on how to get yourself into one of those jobs… because that’s where the big salaries are.

At the same time, make yourself as valuable as you can be at your present job. And start focusing on the really important work that will propel your career – and your income – forward.

Before long, your hourly rate will be double or even triple what it is today.

And your personal time will be worth even more.

It might be three times as valuable as the time you spend at work… five times as valuable… or 10 times as valuable. Only you will know just how much it’s worth to you. But at the very least, your personal time should be worth double what your work time is.

Once you know what that number is, you can make sure that every personal task you engage in is “worth” that amount of money to you.

Let’s say, for example, that, by applying my formula, you have calculated your work time to be worth $25 per hour. And you figure your personal time is worth twice that: $50 per hour. Let’s also say that you spend three hours every weekend in the summer doing yard work (mowing the lawn, trimming hedges, fertilizing, and so on). Ask yourself if you think it’s worth $150 ($50 times 3 hours of your personal time). If you feel it is, keep doing it. If it’s not, hire someone else to do it – which you can certainly do for a lot less than $150 a week – and free up your time for activities you really enjoy.

Same goes for any household job that you can hire out – cleaning, painting, washing the car.

We all have the same number of hours in the day. How much you get paid for the hours you work – and how much pleasure you get from the hours you don’t – are both up to you.

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Rewarding Yourself

When I was first getting into the business of selling educational programs, a famous zero-down real estate guru asked me, “Do you know the thing people who take my courses want most?”

I had a sneaking suspicion I was about to get it wrong, but I gamely answered: “To be successful real estate investors?”

He laughed. “You’ve got a lot to learn, my friend.”

I took the bait. “So what do your customers want?”

“They want to avoid taking action.”

I told him I wasn’t sure I understood. He was kind enough to clarify. “Most of the people who take my courses and who will be buying your programs want to feel like they are on the road to success. But they don’t want that road to end. They like the journey. They fear the destination.”

“And why would that be?” I asked.

“To tell you the truth,” he said. “I don’t know. But I can tell you this. After our real estate students have gotten the knowledge they need to succeed, few of them get out there and get to work. Most of them just buy more programs. If they don’t buy them from us, they will buy them from someone else. So we sell them extra programs.”

“That’s sort of depressing,” I said.

“If you give one of my customers – someone who has completed his real estate education and is fully prepared to start investing profitably – a choice between actually getting to work and buying another course to learn more, he will buy the course.”

“Are they afraid of failing?”

“Could be that,” he said. “Could be they’re afraid of success. As I said, I don’t know.”

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Emily Dickinson

With her lifetime production of 1,700 poems, Emily Dickinson was one of the most prolific poets of all time.

You could replicate her feat by writing a poem a day (five a week) for less than eight years.

I did it for one year — and during the process my skills definitely improved. I don’t know if any of my poems will ever match her best stuff… but I know now that my good poems are better than her weak ones.

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To-Do Lists

The great thing about writing to-do lists is that the process itself is motivating. There is no doubt in my mind that I am three hundred percent more productive since I began doing it. But there is a problem. It takes time to write a good to-do list and it takes effort. Unless you are careful, the list making will drain vital energy from you. If you write your lists in the morning and they are extensive, you may not have the energy afterwards to launch into an important project. Thus, it is better to write to-do lists at night.

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