Management
Michael Mehlberg
Project Management Solution? Keep It Simple ...

Project management is among a top skill to master in any business; especially one wanting to grow.

Why?

Because without project management, business owners will unnecessarily run into common issues:

Project Management Solution? Keep It Simple Stupid
Productivity
Michael Mehlberg
Getting Derailed? Leave Room to Accommodate the ...

You often get derailed by "the unexpected.”

It’s inevitable.

You get interrupted an unexpected number of times daily. Those interruptions come at unexpected times. They each take an unexpected amount of time with which to deal.

That’s why it’s "the unexpected."

These interruptions kill your flow, destroy your focus, and force you to work on the urgent instead of the important.

So how do you deter, prevent, and deal with the problems these unexpected interruptions incur? 

Getting Derailed? Leave Room to Accommodate the Unexpected
Product Development
Michael Mehlberg
The Exact Value of Your Million Dollar Idea

I was shocked, hurt, and felt like my idea had been stolen. Though I had the idea first, Nintendo would be the star. Nintendo would make $millions. It took years before I was old enough to recognize the important lesson in this experience... 

The Exact Value of Your Million Dollar Idea
Business
Michael Mehlberg
Finding Your Value Despite the Competition

Are you second-guessing your next great idea? Are you downplaying the value you could provide to others? Are you upset that you found a competitor in the market who seems to be offering everything you want to (and seems to be finding great success doing it)?

It might be time to step back and realize a few important things.

Finding Your Value Despite the Competition
Productivity
Michael Mehlberg
On the Power and Freedom of Getting Yourself ...
On the Power and Freedom of Getting Yourself (and Your Business) Organized

Planning

7 Essential Elements of a Yearly Planner

7 Essential Elements of a Yearly Planner

By the end of this article, I’m going to give you a digital version of a yearly planner for free. One I’ve spent the last decade refining and tweaking and tailoring based on a 360 degree, science-backed productivity system focused on improving all seven important aspects of my life.

It’s been so powerful for me that I wrote a book about it, have written countless articles about it (this being yet another), and have spent the last few years meticulously drawing out every month, week, and day in my paper notebook with a ruler and pen.

Why it’s so powerful is the purpose of this article. And it comes down to these seven essential elements:

The Single Most Effective Thing You Can Do to Produce Consistently Measurable Results

The Single Most Effective Thing You Can Do to Produce Consistently Measurable Results

Can I tell you something?

I took the day off to home school my kids and I'm about ready to pull my fucking hair out.

Not because of my kids.

They're troopers. They're working hard. They're dealing with this shitty #covid19 hand better than many adults.

No, I was frustrated because I didn't know how long each assignment would take, didn't know when they'd get tired, and had no idea how to move them through their planned education. As such, we failed a math test, spent twice as long as we should have on history, and I missed feeding them all lunch.

Tonight, I'm recommending my wife to sainthood.

Now, with a bit of perspective, I see exactly what went wrong.

I had a plan, but I didn't have a schedule.

One Behavior Separates the Massively Productive from the Disorganized and Overwhelmed

One Behavior Separates the Massively Productive from the Disorganized and Overwhelmed

It’s a terrible feeling.

Being exhausted from a day of constant activity but without a sense of accomplishment.

You move from task to task, keeping busy, but never really making progress.

As if exhaustion weren’t enough, overwhelm hovers overhead. Even when you finish a task. Even after you head home for the night.

That overwhelm is the last thing you think of before falling to sleep.

It’s the first thing you think of upon waking.

It just might be the biggest source of stress in your life.

You’ve tried many life hacks and productivity tips. Like aspirin, they offer some temporary relief. But this sense of overwhelm isn’t a minor headache; it’s a goddamn knife in your brain that leaves you constantly wondering how you’re going to get it all done, or whether you’ll ever get ahead.

It’s time you took the knife out and felt a sense of relief.

A Massively Productive Day Starts with These 3 Things (the Night Before)

A Massively Productive Day Starts with These 3 Things (the Night Before)

It’s a fact.

Waking early is NOT correlated with success.

The proof is in the research. 

According to the Huffington Post, “nearly 50% of self-made millionaires wake up at least three hours before their workday actually begins.” [1] 

Okay, that’s not a lot of research, but read that quote again if you need to. While it suggests rising early contributes to success in a matter-of-fact tone, less than half of self-made millionaires are early birds. Which means the other half aren’t. 

This article goes on to list a dozen or so wildly successful business owners, executives, and entrepreneurs who wake up before the crack of dawn, as if this is correlated to their success.

It’s not the only one.

Self-improvement gurus publish dozens of listicles daily on the benefits of rising before dawn. Success experts scream of the benefits of an early start. We even hear of historical figures like George Washington who “the sun never caught in bed.”

All this pressure to set an early alarm, get your ass out of bed, and get moving before the rest of the world... its enough to make you want to try.

But when you do, you feel groggy, cold, and it takes you an hour to warm up for the day. Then, when afternoon arrives, sleepiness strikes, and it’s all you can do to keep from nodding off (let alone get anything done).

If the point of waking up early is to crush your day, why does getting up early suck so much life and productivity out of you?

And, if getting up early is not correlated with success, what truly makes a successful day?

I’ve got three answers to those questions, and they all start the night before.

How To Break a Funk and Refocus on What's Important

How To Break a Funk and Refocus on What's Important

Yesterday, I was high on a big fat doobie of accomplishment, a productivity monster crushing every activity with aplomb. Today I woke up to a sick wife and daughter, a migraine of my own, and two sons who had to finish last-minute school projects that rivaled NASAs space shuttle development program in size and scope.

I felt defeated, exhausted, overwhelmed, and wishing for my day back.

When this happens, you can recover in three ways:

10x Your Success Rate With This Monthly Planning Process

10x Your Success Rate With This Monthly Planning Process

Whenever there’s a new month, there should be a new plan.

With a fresh month, you’ve got 20 or so whole working days in front of you.

You weren’t thinking of just winging it, were you 😉?

You already know this, but “winging it” is not how you achieve your goals. That’s not how you’ll finish this year a success.

People who wing it often wonder how they worked so hard and yet don’t find themselves where they want to be.

On the other hand, high-achievers use every new month as an opportunity to do two things:

,

30 Days of Daily Planning for a Better Life

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30 Days of Daily Planning for a Better Life

The last place I ever wanted to be was on a twin-engine propeller plane in an ice storm.

Yet there I was, sitting in seat 2b, listening to the engines labor to keep 20 tons of metal and humanity afloat. Unlike the constant drone of a jet engine, this prop plane had a chant—a repetitive roar intermingled with a gnarly growl—like a lion voicing his displeasure as he tumbled around in an industrial dryer.

41 Ways to Get Home Early Every Day This Week

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗡𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗕𝗲𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗲

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

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

35. Call instead of email
36. Send shorter emails… get to the point
37. Only read emails where you are in the to: line

𝗔𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗘𝗻𝗱 𝗼𝗳 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗗𝗮𝘆

38. Block time before you leave to clean up your day
39. Reduce and remove clutter in your work space

𝗠𝗶𝘀𝗰/𝗗𝗼𝗻’𝘁 𝗙𝗼𝗿𝗴𝗲𝘁

40. Add some greenery to your work space (scientifically proven to increase productivity)
41. Sit, stand, walk, talk, act confidently

How to Get Where You're Going with a Good Plan

How to Get Where You're Going with a Good Plan

A good plan for the week starts on Monday and has two parts:

☝️ The three most important things you’ll get done this week to make it easier to achieve your goal.
✌️ The three things you will get done today, Monday, that will make it easier to have a successful week.

That’s it.

People often complicate planning, thinking it requires expensive project management software, some fancy new task management app, or PhD in Gantt charting to organize their thinking.

This over-complication transforms into an excuse for not planning—for working in disorganized chaos—for living a busy but unproductive life.

But here’s the thing:

,

A 30-Second Exercise for a Full Day of Productivity

,
A 30-Second Exercise for a Full Day of Productivity

Tetris is the best puzzle game of all time. Period.

(I thought of ending the post here, but you’d have no f*cking clue how that statement relates to this picture, and I have a point to make...)

The satisfaction of slipping a multicolored shape into the perfect opening to clear the entire board in one epic moment can’t be explained, it must be played.

When you get good at Tetris, you automatically get good at similar games like Dr. Mario, Bejeweled, or Luminex.

That’s because they all have…

The Japanese Planning System For Procrastinators

The Japanese Planning System For Procrastinators

Planning isn’t for procrastinators.

Procrastinators need pressure to complete their project—time pressure, money pressure, the pressure of a demanding customer.

Procrastinators also need energy. Energy to focus on their task. Energy to ignore the coffee machine, phone calls, texts, cat videos, and other distractions.

When procrastinators have energy and pressure, they don’t need a plan. Shit just gets done.

Without these two things, however, procrastinators find themselves thrashing around like fish in a catch-and-release pond, biting one shiny lure after another, wondering why they can’t make it home.

If you’ve ever procrastinated, you know that fighting it is impossible. But you also know that succumbing to a day of lost work isn’t acceptable.

That’s where Kanban comes in.

Use This Exercise to Get Out of Disorganized Chaos

Use This Exercise to Get Out of Disorganized Chaos

It’s Friday, and you’re battered from a 5-day attack on your focus, attention, and patience; a battle that started the moment your alarm blared Monday morning.

If you started with a plan, it’s now buried in the rubble of a week that bombarded you with emails, phone calls, and customer demands.

Yes, the work-week struggle was real, and though it’s now over, another battle looms next week.

But, enter the weekend with a clean slate and you’ll start next week fresh, reinvigorated, and ready to crush it. What’s more, your free hours won’t be consumed with thoughts of unfinished tasks. You’ll enjoy a truly restful weekend.

This all begins with a weekly review.

Get the Results You Need to Hit Your Goals Faster, Better, Cheaper

Get the Results You Need to Hit Your Goals Faster, Better, Cheaper

There are three ways of working:

  1. 😫 Working in chaos.

  2. 🙂 Getting shit done.

  3. 😁 Getting the results you need to hit your goals faster, better, cheaper.

When you work in chaos or you just try to get shit done, it’s easy to think:

start work -> to get results -> so I can meet my goals.

But this is backwards.

Prevent Wasted Effort by Beginning With the End in Mind

Prevent Wasted Effort by Beginning With the End in Mind

It’s Monday, closing time, and in four days your week will be over.

Where will you find yourself Friday afternoon? What will you have accomplished?

Most people don’t know. They begin each day, do what they can, and try to “finish things up” Friday afternoon before cashing out for the weekend.

I’ve been there. Living day to day, never knowing how much I can get done, never planning a path my goals.

How Much Planning Should You Really Do for a Creative Project?

How Much Planning Should You Really Do for a Creative Project?

Some projects, like building a house, cleaning a garage, or building a military helicopter can be scheduled in great detail from start to finish. 

Most projects cannot. 

So does that mean you should give up? Should you run your next project ad-hoc, dealing with issues as they arise and hoping for the best?

4 Ways to Optimize Your Small Business Finance Processes in 2018

4 Ways to Optimize Your Small Business Finance Processes in 2018

For the majority of small businesses, managing finances is one of the most difficult tasks to perform. However, no matter how tedious this task may be, it is critical for your business’ growth. It not only helps you predict where your business is headed but also allows you to make more informed and data-backed business decisions. Not to mention that maintaining your financial records will make your tax reporting and payments much simpler.

Here are a few tips that will help you boost your finances in 2018.