Productivity is something that almost everyone struggles with. It’s easy to sit at your desk all day, just to work for hours and feel that, at the end of it, you haven’t achieved very much.
But being productive has broader benefits than getting more tasks completed in a day. The only true way to be productive, is to create a rhythm in your life and business, which makes things flow easier. By doing this, you’ll find that you get more done, but without work feeling as difficult. You’ll also find that you burn out much less if you ever burn out at all.
In this article, I detail the systems that I have used in my life and business, to build a lifestyle that fits my values. If you put these systems in place, then you’ll find that the automatic outcome of applying them, in whatever context, business or otherwise, is fulfilment.
In my early years, my life ambition was to be a guitarist in Metallica. They still haven’t called, and I’m getting to a point in my life where I think they might never call.
In my younger years, while I waited for Metallica’s invitation, I decided to study law at university. On my first day, I was told by a fellow student that I had no chance of success because I had dreadful qualifications, and my parents had no money.
My immediate thought was, “forget you” (or words to that effect), and I used this as a driving point to motivate me towards fulfilment.
Although I rose high in my career in law, and I’ve built healthy businesses and property portfolios since, I would never describe myself as ‘self-made’. I’ve always stood on the shoulders of giants and I believe that mentorship and the right guidance, are vital to achieving fulfilment.
During my journey, I met the most wonderful person on the planet, my now wife, Liz. At the time, Liz was a single woman, in the male-dominated property industry, investing in houses in multiple occupations (HMOs) before they were really ‘a thing’.
She struggled, with agents not returning her calls and builders turning down refurbishments. When we had our daughter, Liz asked me if I’d invest in property with her full time, handling the business side, while she managed the properties. Having seen the potential that property investment offered, I agreed, left law and have never looked back since.
Liz and I dived headfirst into our new venture. We grew our portfolio to the point of managing 236 tenants. To specify, that was one tenant in each room, no couples, or families, so it was a lot of work. We achieved this through a mixture of investing in the buy, refurbish, refinance (BRR) strategy, adding a layer of rent-to-rent, lease options and even onboarding some HMO management clients, to fast-track our growth.
We invested our own money in projects, but we also used investor capital, often sticking to one investor per deal, who would put forward 100% of the purchase price. Even though our strategy allowed for rapid growth, it became a self-made nightmare. It was a lot of hard work and long hours, with very little rest. Early. starts and seven-day workdays weren’t uncommon.
Though the money was good, I had a life-changing epiphany that made me reevaluate everything. Tragically, I lost a dear friend of mine to cancer. We’d gone through a lot together and while we knew his diagnosis was terminal, I still wasn’t prepared when he passed.
I grew up by the sea, so my automatic reaction was to run back to it. I went to the Yorkshire coast and eventually fell in love with surfing while I was there.
This incident made me realise that I wanted more from life than just to work. I wanted freedom. I wanted to surf and spend time with my family, not be chained to my desk or phone forever.
We decided to trim down our property portfolio to the very best assets, selling some of our properties and deleveraging. We paid back investors early and created a more streamlined, manageable business, which gave us our time back.
Not everyone is the right fit to be a Grant Cardone style ‘empire builder’. It almost seems controversial to say, with today’s buzz around entrepreneurship, but some people would do better as a high-ranking employee in a business. Others would fare better by creating a lifestyle over a monster of multiple companies. Entrepreneurship is hard, it’s not for everyone and people have to find what works for them.
But in the property industry, the loudest voices are those of the empire builders. Individuals who devote their lives to building big businesses and sizeable property portfolios. This leads many people to follow suit, but a large majority of them burn out or quit, because this approach just isn’t for them. You can fall into the trap of becoming financially free, but the cost is creating a horrendous job, which is worse than the one you originally wanted to leave.
You might be more of the Tim Ferris type, like me. The type of person who would rather run a business from their laptop in a warm country, with work revolving around you, rather than you revolving around your workload.
Knowing what you want from life is the key that will help you to build a business you love. One that grows almost naturally and helps you to avoid feeling the way I did, when I was managing 236 tenants.
A fun way to find out the things that you want from life is to play the ‘Post-it Note’ game. To play this, dedicate some time to sit around the table with the relevant other(s) in your life, including your kids, if you have them. Everyone playing the game gets a pack of Post-it Notes. Then, on the wall, mark out the future. For example, depending on age, mark out 50 years in the future and then work backwards in decades. If you have time, then filter this down to each individual year.
Get everyone around the table to write on a Post-it Note the various things they want from life. These things can be wild and outrageous. Cars, money, property, holidays, etc., Literally, anything you want.
Now you know what you want, stick it to the year that you want to have it by. For example, you might decide that you want to move into your dream home ten years from now.
As you play this game and get closer to the end, you’ll start to see what you want your life to look like in the next year or two.
This is a great game for understanding your direction of travel and what you want your future to look like. It’s also a good way of understanding what your partner and/or children want to achieve.
In John C Maxwell’s book, 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth, he writes about ‘The Law of Design’ – How to maximise your growth with strategies. In this section of the book, he mentions reviewing every entry in your diary and analysing if you want more of that task, less of it, or whether you want to remove that task from your diary altogether. This will give you a clear idea of what you need to outsource or quit doing.
Next, get an A1 calendar and put it on your table. If you have kids, mark out the school holidays. Then, pen in the things that are most important to you. This could be a sporting or musical event. Whatever is important to you, put those things into the calendar first, including activities like being with your friends and family.
Then, put your entrepreneurial stuff on the calendar. That’s things like marketing campaigns you’re planning to run, events you’re hosting or scheduled promotions. Decide and commit to key milestones, which dictate when these things are started and when they’re considered a success.
Look at what you’re doing, at the quarter of each year. Then, distil this into monthly tasks, like analysing your management accounts. Finally, hone this in even further until you know what tasks you should be doing weekly and even daily, to achieve your mission.
When I see people who seem to be stuck in the same place year after year, it’s often because they subconsciously don’t want the thing that they’re pursuing. Either that, or they’re scared of achieving it.
I see this a lot with people who try to raise private finance. If they’re struggling to do this, then it can be because they’re high in conscientiousness or extremely risk averse. Without realising it, they’re self-sabotaging or stopping themselves, because the fear of owing money to someone is too great.
The things that hold us back are almost always on the inside.
My key piece of advice is to always work on your direction of travel and have a deep understanding of your values. It’s impossible to make progress if you’re not working in line with your values.
For example, my top three values are freedom, family and wealth. To me, wealth means security, not necessarily just money. To be at my happiest, fulfilled and my most productive, I have to live my life in alignment with these three things. If you don’t know what your values are, then I highly recommend doing some work on this.
You also need to understand your biorhythm. We are all unique creatures, so this is different for all of us. I love The Miracle Morning, because I’m a morning person, but I also understand that it does not work for everyone.
On the other hand, my brother is a night owl. He doesn’t come awake until eight o’clock at night and his best work is probably conducted at around 11 p.m.
Knowing which hours you’re at your most productive and at during which hours you’re unfocused and unmotivated, allows you to schedule your most important tasks accordingly. I know that I’m at my most productive at 9 a.m., so this is when I work on my biggest or most complicated tasks.
I have been horrendously burnt out several times in my life. Now, to avoid it, I have my daily rituals. These are things like my morning coffee, meditation and a wind-down walk in nature. I combine this with topping and tailing my day with things that start my day right and allow me to decompress once I’ve finished work (like my walks).
The whole ‘grind-set’ – work 14-hour days, 7 days a week, is great for a short while, but very few people can carry this on continuously. There are times when this will be necessary, but don’t live in that place for too long once the pressure is over and the long hours are no longer needed.
It’s the ‘Law of Diminishing Returns’. The more input you put into something, the lower the returns become.
Have a Productive Year!
I hope that you have found this article insightful and that it has given you some tips on how to find your direction and live a more productive and fulfilled life.
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