The Quest

As the CEO of Tsheets.com, a productivity tool, I set out to interview CEOs and find the Top 10 Productivity Tools they use to manage their time. After an initial round of interviewing about 20 CEOs, I started getting a bit nervous, as I wasn’t finding any common tools that that they were using. I considered that the effort might be a flop – that is, until I interviewed Jason Fried of 37Signals. During the conversation I started to see a common thread. The “Light Bulb” moment hit me, and I blurted out, “That’s fascinating. I’m beginning to see some brilliant common threads.” Jason’s immediate response was, “Yeah? Well, what are they?” After mentioning a few of them to him, he said, “Very interesting. I’m looking forward to seeing the end result.”

After I hung up the phone, I realized that the productivity commonalities weren’t tools at all – but rather principles! I knew that I was onto something, but I also knew the title had to change.

One of my final interviews was with Andy Sorcini, an obviously successful social media expert as he is the # 1 Digger in the World! At the end of the conversation, I realized that he had some brilliant concepts that led to extraordinary productivity. Clearly these principles didn’t apply just to the most successful CEOs. Thus the Title:

“Productivity Secrets of the Most Successful People”

Dictionary.com defines Principle as: A fundamental, primary, or general law or truth from which others are derived. E.g. the principle of modern physics.

As defined, I have truly embraced the idea that principles are as factual as the law of gravity. Only the highly misinformed or the delusional are going to argue with you that jumping off a building results in a fall; yet the same applies to business principles.

***This document has been abbreviated to accommodate quick reading; please visit mattrissell.com for the full conversation***

From C-level executives of billion dollar organizations to companies of smaller, yet successful entrepreneurs, here are the resulting Top 10 Productivity Secrets of the Most Successful People:

 

1. Passion!

This is your “Want”. The very premise of all productivity is a love for what you do. I asked every interviewee, “If you could take everything that we have talked about and boil it down to just one thing – What would be the key to productivity”? The most common response? Passion.

For many – intellectuals, to be specific – this can be a tough concept because it deals with heart and not the head. Passion doesn’t need to be for the product itself, but what the product or service does. E.g. A productivity tool in and of itself may not be a thing of passion – but the end result of increased productivity could be.

Productivity Principle Summarized: If you’re not passionate about what you are doing – then stop now!

 

2. Surround yourself with people of Excellence

Notice that I didn’t simply say, “hire great people” but rather surround yourself with people of excellence. The obvious is to hire great people to be productive, but personal productivity goes MUCH further. Who is your mentor? Who are your friends? The same principle that applies to my three year old daughter applies to us as business leaders: Show me your friends and I can tell you what you’ll be doing in 5 years. Powerful isn’t it?

As I mentioned above, hiring great people isn’t the end-all but is significant in surrounding yourself with people of excellence. When you hire excellence, they bring both the problem and the solution. It doesn’t matter how you describe them: Great, Phenomenal, Extraordinary, Best of the Best – when it comes to your people DO NOT settle for “Good”.

Productivity Principle Summarized: Surrounding yourself with excellence personally and professionally defines your current productivity as well as your future.

 

3. Create an Environment where Great People Can Succeed

It’s one thing to surround yourself with excellence; it’s another to keep excellence around you! While I’ve heard the saying many times “hire people smarter than yourself.” The most successful take it step further and say “why spend so much time and money recruiting smart people and then allow insecurity to take over and spend all of your time making sure that everyone knows how smart you are?”

Examples of how to create environments of excellence for productivity:

• Pay them well – visit www.mattrissell.com for out of the box ideas
• Show Gratitude – This caught me by surprise and came up often enough to stand on it’s own as a productivity principle. See principle number nine.
• Understand the Vision – See mattrissell.com for a great example of employee vision in the Roman Empire.
• Do not be delusional – others are not motivated by building your dream
• Allow for creativity
• Candor is required

Productivity Principle Summarized: Hire the best and treat them as the best, and the productivity will follow.

 

4. Simplicity!

What a paradox this one became! This was the most frequently occurring topic in my interviews with the most content, and yet shouldn’t it have been simple? I discovered that the most successful leaders keep things as simple as possible, so much so, that even leaders of the most technologically advanced companies keep things relatively low-tech to stay productive!

A familiar example given was to pick one project and complete it; not getting caught up in the tyranny of the urgent by multi-tasking. Taken a step further, that example was compared to the difference between a shotgun and a rifle. A 12-gauge shotgun cartridge has two times the amount of powder that a .270 rifle cartridge has. Yet because the energy is spread out between so many different objects, it’s practically useless beyond 50 yards. While a .270 cartridge, with less energy focused on one object, can be effective out to 1,000 yards. We are back to the relationship between productivity and physics again, eh?

Productivity Principle Summary: Do one thing at a time with less energy, and you’ll make a great impact.

 

5. Know your Motivation

This is your “Why”. Many confuse this with their “Want” or passion, but these are two very different items. The “Why” is your motivation to build your passion. The “Why” is critical to productivity because it’s what keeps you going when times get tough.

Where are you headed in your life? Who do you want to be in 10 years? These are big but important questions pertaining to productivity.

You may be thinking your motivation is money, however my interviews confirmed the timeless quote of Warren Buffet, “Money has to be the by-product of your definition of success – not your definition of success.”

Some examples from the CEOs and business leaders interviewed:

• To become the standard
• To be the best or to win
• To purchase the NY Jets (J-E-T-S, Jets, Jets, Jets!)

Conversely, an example of a poor, but common, motivator for entrepreneurs, has been: “To be focused on the exit plan… To plan on being bought out for $X amount in two years”

Productivity Principle Summarized: Know the answers to your “Why” Questions before you run into difficulties; Money isn’t enough of a motivator.

 

6. “Secret Sauce”

If you want to have a provocative conversation with successful people, talk to them about two things: Getting stuff done and their ‘Secret Sauce’. On it’s own, this is at least a two-drink conversation.

It was unbelievable to me that all the successful people I spoke to nailed this. They all knew what makes them a limited edition or gives them the competitive advantage.

Some examples:

• Their opinion that others want to hear
• Love for people
• The Gift of ‘understanding what people want to know’ even when it changes
• Genetics
• The people that they surround themselves with

 

7. Make your decisions be great

Notice that I did not say, “Make great decisions”. Overwhelmingly, the successful people out there say things like, “Just make a decision, and if it’s not a good one, learn from it and go on”. We all make bad or “wrong” decisions at times but on the other hand, the cost of not making a decision is much more expensive than making one. Beware of the trap of becoming paralyzed in your productivity from fear of making wrong decisions.

Here’s a perfect example: An IBM Executive made a “bad decision” that cost the company $3 million. The next day, he started packing up his office. Thomas Watson, the CEO, walked by his office and asked what he was doing. The exec responded that he was ready to be let go because of his “wrong” decision. Watson’s response? “B.S. You better not leave me now – I just invested $3milion training you.”

It’s not about right or wrong decisions in building productivity, it’s about what’s working or not working and constantly adjusting… Are you Familiar with the definition of insanity?

Productivity Principle Summarized: More productivity is lost from indecision than from making the wrong decisions.

 

8. Balance

This is for long-term productivity and shoots up to the top of the list for most of the successful people I interviewed. A quote that absolutely stopped me in my tracks was from John Pollard, CEO of Jott.com. “Anyone can work 16 hour days. The secret to being productive is being able to get done what needs to be done in an eight to ten hour day, still get a workout in, have a successful marriage, relationship with your kids, and sustain life outside of work; otherwise, you’ll lose the “Why”. You need balance in your life if you are going to stay at peak productivity.

Another comment I heard all too often in my interviews was, “I’m not too sure how much longer I can keep this up”.

Productivity Principle Summarized: Balance is essential to stay at peak productivity for the long haul.

 

9. Execute

Productivity requires action.

Few people actually execute; rarely do they say what they are going to do and then roll up their sleeves and get to work. While dreaming, talking, and thinking can all be included in the productivity world, the successful don’t forget the “do”.

The most successful also execute on the important things – not just the urgent. An easy phrase to help distinguish the difference is a quadrant (learn more on the Vlog on mattrissell.com). Kevin Dixie, CEO of Fuel My Blog, had a great point regarding executing on the important: when he goes through his list of tasks, he finds the item he wants to do the least and does it first, as it’s usually the most important.

Productivity Principle Summarized: Execute. Execute. Execute.

 

10. BUILD YOUR OWN SYSTEM!

Surely we’ve all heard of David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” system. Not one CEO or successful leader referred to his name or system. . While Mr. Allen has good solid principles in his book, the applications that he suggests are built for a very small % of the population.

To accentuate the point that a successful system needs to be “your own”; here are some quotes from the Most Successful when comparing their methods to the standard.

• “I do things different”
• “I don’t do things right”
• “I do things backwards”

While they may not do things according the to book, the most successful each have a system of productivity that works.

Productivity Principle Summarized: A productivity system is integral to success; however, must be made your own.

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* Click here for a live conversation about these principles with Robert Scoble on FastCompany’s WorkFast Show at 10am PT on Jul 11.

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