Many innovators and successful personalities have earned their accolades because they have learnt to work smart instead of working hard. Instead of focusing on getting busy, they focus on being productive. They make the most out of their work schedules and achieve more than your ordinary joe.

One thing that a lot of successful people will tell you about achieving success is that you have to go ‘back to the basics‘. So we show you the how a ‘minimalist approach’.

A perfect example of a productive leader is Steve Jobs, whose minimalist approach in completing the task means that he would sacrifice many luxuries during the hours he knew his company needed him most. By taking action and filtering out the things he knew would slow down Apple’s growth Steve was able to be nimble and creative to outwit his competition, saying he succeeded would be an understatement because he didn’t just succeed, he outperformed other business leaders.

Achieving success is not just about TAKING ACTION and continuously improving. It’s also about doing the right things to accomplish goals quickly and effectively – avoiding things that may slow down progress. Some useful guidelines in increasing productivity significantly in the business environment nowadays include:

Creating Your Vision & Making It Clear

The biggest obstacle in reaching your end goal is making that first step and most people fail in this regard because they do not really know why they have to do whatever it is they should be doing to get there.

By creating a mental or visual note of your plans and dreams, you will be motivated to switch up the gears more as you convince yourself that you have a compelling future ahead of you with massive gains and reward. This way, you have now created a commitment in your mind to this vision and the more you remind yourself of this, the more responsible you will be in seeing your dreams come true. It’s really plain and simple, write down your vision, not your goal, your overall vision and a guide on how you are going to get there. The more clearer you can paint this picture for yourself, you will know exactly what you need to do to get there.

Finding A Role Model Or Mentor

It is difficult to accomplish something when people do things alone without the presence of like-minded people. Most people become successful because they emulate the success of others and try to distance themselves from the problems faced by their mentors. By finding a role model or mentor, or by just spending time with good company, people can follow in their steps and be motivated to succeed. We all need someone or something to believe in. Find yours and follow through.

Throwing Away Distractions

When trying to achieve something worthwhile, distractions such as surfing the net, reading junk email, or watching TV can be the pot holes in your journey down the road of success. A few minutes a day procrastinating can add up to hours in one month. This wasted time is precious and could have been used doing other productive things to get you closer to your dreams. It may be difficult at first to steer away from these distractions but a good start is by limiting these distractions slowly until the mind realizes they are really useless. Start by timing yourself when you start certain activities ie… watching Lost on TV or checking out that funny cat picture site and you will soon realize how much time can easily be wasted.

We all need a balance in what we do, just make sure that website or tv show you where just spending your time with was not a 3 out of 10 and you have really just wasted hours of precious time when you could have been that much closer to your dreams.

Setting Realistic Goals And Plans

Many failures arise from the fact that people set very high and unattainable goals and when they fail to meet them, they give up altogether. Goals and plans are useful in motivating but making them unrealistic can be very damaging. When planning, people should make sure their goals and plans are attainable within the time frame allotted to them. Working smart means planning goals that are SMART – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely.

Making A To-Do List

This is a simple tool but is very effective which is why most, if not all, successful businessmen use it. The to-do-list should contain doable actions for each day. When making a list, there should be more than enough time for each action to avoid the doer being discouraged when he ends up getting delayed. There are a mass amount of great to-do list Apps out there now. Ever Note, Task Rabbit, Fetchnotes just to name a few. If you don’t have one, get one.

Making A Not-To-Do List

To be truly productive, you should not only list down things you have to-do, you should also list down things you should avoid. These can come in the form of distractions or temptations that slow down progress. You can use this list later after having accomplished the plans for the day related to your work. We all have vices, find yours and push it to the back of your back burner so you can prioritize the more important tasks to succeed.

Learn To Delegate

One thing that can be attributed to the success of multimillion dollar companies nowadays is that they streamlined their business process by delegating work effectively and in many cases even outsourced some of their business processes. When a person focuses on one process too much, they can lose track of other processes that also needs attention and their overall progress starts to slow down. Instead of focusing on every part of a plan, successful people learn to entrust some parts to others who specialise in that area and can complete the tasks more accurate and efficiently.

Rewarding Yourself

Trying to achieve success can be very time-consuming and it requires a lot of effort. This often leads to ‘burn out’, where people start losing track of their goals because they have become too clouded with all the pressure associated with their actions.

Instead of focusing everything on the work that needs to be done, it is equally important to relax and reward yourself every once in a while to recharge your mental and physical well-being. Stress and pressure certainly does nothing to improve performance.

There should always be just the right amount of work-life balance in every plan of success. A cluttered life equals a cluttered mind, minimising the distractions and cutting out the unwanted BS in your life will do wonders for your productivity and focus in achieving your dreams.

Minimalist & Productivity Quotes

“Absorb what is useful, reject what is useless, add what is specifically your own.“ –Bruce Lee

“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupe

“Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say let your affairs be as one, two, three and to a hundred or a thousand. We are happy in proportion to the things we can do without.” – Henry David Thoreau

“Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people they don’t like.” – Will Rogers

“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” – Confucious

“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” – Albert Einstein

“If you want to become full, let yourself be empty.” – Tao Te Ching

“Once you have mastered time, you will understand how true it is that most people overestimate what they can accomplish in a year – and underestimate what they can achieve in a decade!” – Tony Robbins

Article By Joel Brown of Addicted2Success