How Are Some People So Productive?

The thing that impresses me the most about successful people is the sheer volume and quality of their work. How can someone accomplish so much in the same 24 hour days that you and I have?

Who are some of these people I’m so impressed with? Well how about Ryan Holiday, who was simultaneously Marketing Director at American Apparel, blogging extensively, and writing high quality books. Or James Altucher, who has started multiple successful companies, ran a hedge fund, spilled his soul on his personal blog, wrote several of books, runs a very successful podcast, and is also an angel investor. Or my good friend Justin Mares, who simultaneously scaled Airbrake as Director of Revenue (which led to an acquisition by Rackspace) and co-wrote Traction (which I highly recommend by the way). People like Ryan, James, and Justin inspire me.

I try not to even think about the productivity required by Elon Musk, who is CEO of both Tesla Motors and SpaceX. He’s Iron Man though so I guess he doesn’t count.

So how are these people so productive? Here is what I’ve observed:

  1. Routine: Productive people have a routine that they use to get themselves in the zone. I’ll be writing a lot more about this in the future as it’s a personal interest of mine but for now let’s just say that getting “in the zone” is not random.
  2. Time Management: By this I don’t mean OCD behavior like scheduling every second of your day including bathroom breaks. I’m talking about avoiding the endless Facebook/Twitter/Yahoo/YouTube/Quora/Buzzfeed time waste loops. They seem like short breaks but end up taking 15-20 minutes each time and eat up huge chunks of your day.
  3. Inspired: Productive people simply don’t hate their work. In fact, it’s usually the opposite – they actually enjoy working on their craft.
  4. Student Mentality: All these people have a certain humility about them and in spite of their success, maintain a humble student attitude. They are always learning and more importantly are always open to learning.
  5. Gratitude: it seems counterintuitive but productivity requires being in a healthy state of mind, which means being thankful for your life while still striving for improvement. I’ve seen people I admire consistently practicing gratitude and adding gratitude to my morning routine earlier this year was the best thing I’ve ever done for my mental health.

Here’s some simple math: if someone has just 1 more hour of productivity per day than the average person, at the end of the year, they’ll have 365 hours of extra work. After 10 years, that’s 3650 extra hours. Over a 30 year career, they have a 10,950 hour advantage. According to Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers, 10,000 hours of practice is the key to mastery so based on the math, someone with an extra hour per day will be a master of 1 more skill than the average person. If that skill is something valuable – you can see why that makes a difference. I would make the argument that highly productive individuals actually have a 4-5 hour per day advantage over the average person, which would mean mastery of an additional skill happens in 6-8 years instead of 30. While I’m not a huge fan of Gladwell’s work and disagree on a few things, the conclusion is the same: the extra hours compound into a real advantage over time.

This is one of my favorite topics to learn more about so if you’ve observed any other techniques or use something yourself, definitely let me know in the comments or contact me directly.