Hard Work

3 Simple Steps To Stay On Track When You’re In a Tired, Unmotivated Funk

3 Simple Steps To Stay On Track When You’re In a Tired, Unmotivated Funk

Maybe it was just because it was Monday.

Maybe my weekend was too hectic.

Maybe it was because my kid woke me up three times: once to complain that he couldn’t sleep, once to tell me his stomach hurt, and another to puke.

Whatever it was, I stumbled out of bed feeling like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich marinated in a bag of Nickelodeon gak, trampled by a herd of bison, and left out in the sun to dry.

A glance at my calendar told me that I had more meetings than a millipede has legs giving me one and only one time to exercise, one and only one time to write an article, and zero times to take a seven-hour nap (which is the only thing I was contemplating doing).

Today was gearing up to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

41 Ways to Get Home Early Every Day This Week

The Night Before

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1. Get 7 hours of sleep

2. Lay out daily clothes in advance

3. Block calendar for important work

4. Schedule commute time

5. Schedule breaks

6. Plan to deal with time obstacles

7. Schedule administrivia

In The Morning

8. Exercise

9. Eat healthy food that energizes you

10. Tell everyone when you plan to leave

11. When work begins, begin work (don’t get distracted)

For Meetings

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12. Squeeze meetings together

13. Focus (or leave) meetings that aren’t productive

14. Reschedule meetings that start late

15. Hold stand up meetings

16. Decline meetings where you can’t contribute

17. Add buffer between meetings and tasks

Managing Tasks

18. Schedule important tasks

19. Prioritize urgent tasks

20. Delegate unimportant tasks

21. Delete the rest of your tasks

22. Limit emailing to 3x per day

23. Automate repetitive tasks with apps like IFTTT

24. Bundle similar tasks together

25. Set a timer for your tasks

During Work

26. Begin with the end in mind

27. Minimize distractions

28. Stick to your schedule

29. Delegate

30. Work on what matters

31. Focus with music

32. Work intensely

33. Take breaks often

34. Work when everyone else isn’t

Administrivia

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35. Call instead of email

36. Send shorter emails… get to the point

37. Only read emails where you are in the to: line

Before Heading Home

38. Block time before you leave to clean up your day

39. Reduce and remove clutter in your workspace

Don’t Forget…

40. Add some greenery to your workspace (scientifically proven to increase productivity)

41. Sit, stand, walk, talk, act confidently


About the Author

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Michael Mehlberg

HUSBAND, FATHER, ENTREPRENEUR, BUSINESS STRATEGIST, AUTHOR, FITNESS NUT, ORGANIZATION FREAK, PRODUCTIVITY JUNKIE

I help high-achieving entrepreneurs organize their brain and schedule so they can organize their life and business.

Subscribe to my free, weekly newsletter on personal excellence and business mastery that one client called “The Owners Manual to an Awesome Life.”

So You Want to Be An Influencer? Consider This First...

So You Want to Be An Influencer? Consider This First...

It looks like “the good life,” doesn’t it?

The influencers life. 

Wake up late, post a selfie next to your new Ferrari, then make money horsing around on social media with some trending product sent to you for free by some hot new company.

Cushy. Fun. Exciting.

Who wouldn’t want that life? 

I sure have thought about it. About how to get it. More than once.

Everywhere you turn, influencers seem to dominate the online conversation. Youtube celebrities push funny new videos and receive thousands of likes per second. Instagram characters publish a new post and, before you know it, you’re swiping up on their latest story to buy what they’re pitching.

Though I have no fucking clue what he does, it’s not hard to see myself as the next PewDiePie. It’s not unreasonable to see any influencers success and believe that you can have it too.

And guess what? You can.

You have more opportunities than ever to become a massive, influencing success through dozens of online platforms that reach (quite literally) over 40% of the world’s population. 

For the first time in history, you can get paid to promote a product that you’ve never used, developed by someone you’ve never met, sold by a company you can’t pronounce, and make a fortune doing it.

But this isn’t an article about how to do that.