10x Efficiency – Create A productivity planner (Guide)

Do you know want to know what happened when I first watched my productivity planner video?

I was in high school, one of my friends told me

“Hey Akash” — Come here, I have found something on youtube.as usual, I thought gaming stuff, but later it turns out to be a big ass motivational speaker.No disrespect, but that day I failed to understand what the motivational speakers were trying to say.

Why?

I don’t know, probably because my nerves release extra happy chemicals and I laughed too much.

Anyways, you all might have heard about all the techniques and ideas that you should follow or do in order to achieve this or that. So, much technical stuff and too many things to remember, as all those motivational coaches put in your head and charging your 1000s of dollars.

True isn’t it? Imagine, that you have watched videos of all the great people like steve jobs, Elon muck, Albert einstein, etc. You have also read their books, inspired and motivated to work, and hustle till late.you are also buying courses but at the end of the day, Your outcome is becoming zero.

Why? I think its due to Lack of actions.

This is probably the biggest problem out there which not only hinders your productivity but also destroys your ability to do make an impact.

So, how you can 10x your work is done, by using a self-improvement plan and executing it on a daily basis.

A productivity planner is just a proper guide and a pathway which contains all the steps and detail on how you are going to make yourself better as each day passes. A productivity planner might contain details about your to-do list, short-term and long term goals, and idols in life. Here is a detailed guide, I have explained from my very own experience and journey.

• How you should approach yourself and act on your self-improvement process
• You will also learn about the simple practices of productive planning

How can I improve my personal development?

Let’s understand the basics of personal or self-development. You must have a vision or goal in order to make yourself better every day.

A man without a goal will never motivate himself to wake up every day and hustle for his dreams. This is not rocket science, anyone in the world can have a goal in their irrespective of “How small or big the goal is“. It is all about setting a goal first, that will be enough to kickstart your personal development journey.

• To start with personal development Set a goal based on what you like doing and what you want to accomplish in that particular domain.
• Taking small doable steps in order to reach closer to your goals.
• Setting up a small deadline to make you more effective.
• When you reach your outcome, analyse and learn from it irrespective of success and failure
• Have a strong desire to improve and be open-minded.

What is a productivity planner ?

every human being on this planet who had made a great impact always kept a plan.Albert Einstein, Nikola Tesla, Henry David Thoreau, steve jobs, Benjamin Fraklin, and many more influential people.

A productivity planner is just a mind-map or planned strategy written in a way that yields to your long term benefits or crafting yourself into the person you want to become. A productivity planner contains your future goals ( who you are going to become in 6-7 years ), current goals and things you need to get in order to be more efficient, your strengths and how to polish them and your idols. Although the future is highly unpredictable, having a plan helps a lot.

Why planning is important in life?

just ask yourself this — “Will a ship ever be able to reach his destination without a map”

Of course No, it will either end up in the wrong place or will sink.Sadly, this is what is happening to people these days, they rarely set any goals and end up like a shipwreck.

planning is really important in life, whether you want to improve your personal or professional life, having the right plan and strategy will save your time and resources. Although it is not necessary that everything will go according to the plan if you plan well then you will be able to handle uncertainties.

• Planning is important because It tells you where you are heading
• Even if some uncertainty comes, you can always change your path
• A plan is vital in your journey because it gives you a specific path to follow
• having a plan gives you a meaningful approach to life, you Don’t wake up every morning feeling worthless.

How successful people plan their weekdays?

Planning is not a myth and it clearly shows, this following is the daily schedule plan of Benjamin Fraklin

This plan for the day shows simplicity and dignity in its essence. A clear yet powerful plan to grab the day and end up with being productive. You can do that too, if you want, you can make your daily schedule like Benjamin franklin’ journal. It is better to keep a plan for the day so that you don’t get distracted on unnecessary things.

• Keep your goals for the day clear and simple
• Don’t try to stuff unnecessary task in your to-do list
• Start with the most important task and end with the least important.
• Keep a deadline.
• Reflect and examine your performance, after the outcome

How does writing help in productivity planner ?

A famous essayist Anais Nin once said

“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.”

Why Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, and Many More Great Minds Recommend Journaling? Ever wondered why influential people of our generation who have pushed the human race into prosperity and knowledge recommend writing something on paper?

Writing helps in productive planning by helping you audit yourself when you analyse your past writings, It gives you a straight comparison of the persona you were and what you are becoming. Write, write, and write. Writing should be your policy. Every new thing that you have learned, just write it down, don’t put too much trust in your brain, because your brain can’t remember every information it installs in the system.

Keep a small Journal, That you can carry easily and bring your creative side a Jott down nuance of information.

how successful people think – A productivity planner

1.Thomas Alva Edison’s Personal journal

Throughout Edison’s life, journaling was a consistent practice, capturing not only his inventions but also his mind at work. He wrote 3,500-plus journals containing more than 5 million pages of notes.

Edison was a man of his word when it came to work ethic. He aimed for one minor invention every 10 days and a major invention every six months. Edison achieved this through a massive emphasis on output over success rates. For example, he performed 50,000 experiments to invent the alkaline storage cell and 10,000 to perfect the light bulb.

Just take a look at Edison’s five-page to-do list to see that output in action:

2.Mark Twain’s Personal journal

American author Mark Twain, aka Sam Clemens, started a lifelong love affair with pocket notebooks after being told to keep one handy while apprenticing to be a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi. For the next several decades of his life, he would fill at least 50 such notebooks with musings on politics, religion, people, jokes, personal moments and other anecdotes.

In 1971, the Bancroft Library at the University of California took possession of a massive lot of Twain’s original writings and correspondence, including more than 12,000 letters, 600 unpublished literary manuscripts and journals written between 1855 and 1910. A large portion of these materials has been digitized for perusal online at the Mark Twain Project site.

3.Marie Curie’s Personal journal

In order to leaf through the notebooks of Marie Curie, a pioneering scientist in the study of radioactivity, you’ll require special clothing and a liability waiver. In the course of her research, the French chemist exposed herself daily to radiation, often carrying bottles of polonium and radium in the pocket of her coat. As a result, her journals, notes and personal possessions are so radioactive that it will be thousands of years before anyone will be able to safely peruse them without protection.

Today, the notebooks containing Curie’s groundbreaking research are held in lead-lined boxes at France’s Bibliotheque National. She died in 1934 at the age of 66 of aplastic anaemia, thought to be caused – you guessed it – by radiation exposure.

4.Albert Einstein’s Personal journal

“It’s not that I’m so smart; it’s just that I stay with problems longer.” – Albert Einstein

Few people realize that it took more than a decade for Einstein to be awarded the Nobel Prize for the idea that he originally explored in his journals in 1902 and even fewer realize he spent even longer developing his ideas in his writings and journals.

His one of the most notable works of general relatively spanned eight years and it is in his Zurich Notebook that captures his work and theories building up to the discovery. (Note: I tried my best to fully appreciate his work as I lack the background knowledge to understand his technical work.)

Einstein’s Zurich notebook should serve as an inspiration for any human trying to accomplish work that requires discipline and dedication – a piece of art, book, writing, or advancing the human knowledge in a certain domain, we could all benefit from reading through his meticulous works from the Zurich notebook.

As a food for thought, some sources say that he – in his later years – was working on a single equation that would explain all forces of nature. Now, that is a genuine example of focused and deep work to produce anything significant in your finite lifetime.

5.Charles Darwin’s Personal journal

From his time aboard the HMS Beagle, a five-year expedition that helped lay the groundwork for his theory of evolution, Charles Darwin made it a habit to keep notebooks to record his thoughts and observations. The journals, labelled simply on their covers as A, B, C, D and so forth, spanned everything from early sketches of an evolutionary tree to notes on geology, new species and personal musings on family and friends.

Today, the tens of thousands of papers and notebooks left behind by Darwin can be researched online. Digital collections, featuring more than 195,000 pages and more than 5,000 illustrations, are currently available from both Darwin Online and through the University of Cambridge in England.

Thankfully You don’t need to be a genius or some creative mastermind to take advantage of journaling. Use journaling as a self-improvement plan, write more, analyze yourself. You see, above are those people who have pushed the human race, their minds had exponential capabilities, but why they relied on Writing?

Simple, Your brain remembers writing more than just memorizing. This is one of the most helpful productivity planner that you can add to your list.

Traits Of Successful People

• Higher output leads to higher success rates. Many people optimize to avoid failure, but by optimizing for total output, Edison was able to produce an incredible number of meaningful inventions as you can see above
• Balance work with quality leisure time. Nobody works all the time, so it’s important to keep your life in balance.
• Keep a to-do list. Observing that all successful people kept a long to-do list motivated me to more actively journal my tasks to be done.
• Keep a Journal and Write Daily –writing helps successful people to think better and allowing them to self-audit themselves.

Why you need fewer things to be happy?

enjoying less is also a part of your productivity planner. Do you believe that you need a few things to be happy? probably, many will disagree, but what if I tell you this principle that will amaze you?

Your true inspiration in life comes from a few most important things, rest all are distractions because 80% of your life’s results are due to 20% of the things or efforts your make. This might sound surprising but behind this claim is a proven theory, known as the Pareto principle. Let’s dive deeper.

use the Pareto principle, in simple words —

It is putting the minimum effort which causes the maximum impact on the result. Hard work focuses on the quantity and efforts while smart work is mainly based on quality and planned approach to a respective goal.

let us take a better example

Meet a man named Vilfredo Pareto who invented the 80/20 principle.

He was an Italian engineer, sociologist, economist, political scientist, and philosopher. He introduced the concept of Pareto efficiency and helped develop the field of microeconomics. He was also the first to discover that income follows a Pareto distribution, which is a power-law probability distribution.

The Pareto principle was named after him, and it was built on observations of his such as that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by about 20% of the population.in other words,80% of what you will get in life will be the result of 20% of the efforts you put.

“80% of results come from 20% of effort/time” — Vilfredo Pareto, Corso di economia politica

How to use the 80/20 principle?

As you have understood that 80% of the outcomes roughly comes from 20% of the efforts. Therefore, Engage yourself in finding things that are most important to you, giving you maximum happiness. only 20% of the things around you are the most valuable one, which adds the most impact in your life, rest is a distraction.

less time more results. apply the 80/20 rule in your life and audit your work every week for the best results.

Find those things in your daily life, that gives you most of the satisfaction or outcomes that you desired, learn to eliminate unnecessary tasks that might hinder your schedule. Fetch those 20% of your daily tasks and be absolutely focus about working on them.

How good habits can change your life?

use the 1 % rule I learned from reading the book called “Atomic Habit “ by James clear

working towards your goal and making yourself 1% better every day, results in a 37.78 times improvement by the end of 1 year.

The secret to success is building great actionable habits that prove for your betterment as you go through life. Good Habits compound overtime with proper routine and plan you can outshine your current scenarios and push yourself towards greatness as shown in the above graph As Aristotle once said — We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

4 good habits to develop in your life

1. Fast for the first 6 hours of the day

Fasting is an ancient practice and is helpful in many ways. Fasting reduces bad cholesterol, detoxifies the liver, helps in lowering high blood pressure, increases insulin sensitivity which helps in regulating blood sugar levels.

When you fast, your brain goes into survival mode, leading to an increased ability to focus on the tasks at hand.

2. Talk to strangers every day-

“85% of your financial success is due to your personality and ability to communicate, negotiate, and lead. Shockingly, only 15% is due to technical knowledge”

master your communication skills step by step.

People who spend more time in public have more diverse relationships. This benefits people individually, through improved chances of getting a good job, their health, and many other measures of well-being, and benefits us all by helping people recognize their common interests and accept their differences.

3. Specific time to learn about the money —

you probably have heard, that you must save 10% of the money you earn.

but, is it true ? will saving money can ever make you rich? this might sound a bit awkward, but the answer is no. Saving money can never make you rich instead, learn how to invest in the asset so that it can repay you over time. Invest in long term gains.

here is a book recommendation-

4. Say “No” to unnecessary things —

Surprised?. Yes because saying no helps you to eliminate unnecessary distractions from your life. Well, I am not saying to eliminate everything that comes to you, all I am trying to convey is that when you are doing something important don’t let others ruin your schedule. hence replying with a simple no can help you to avoid distractions.

Saying no has nothing to do with restricting free-thinking or being open-minded, it is just a way of distilling your schedule for deep work.

Conclusion and My final thoughts

As you have learned all these simple plans and techniques for being a better person, here are some takeaways from this article

• Don’t follow others Blindly
• Actions can only change your life
• Set goals, no matter how small
• Keep a to-do list
• Write down things, keep a journal
• Focus on quality rather than quantity
• Focus on building tiny good habits.

Thank you for scrolling, what do you think about the journaling part, comment below your thoughts.What more can I add, please recommend below?