Hack Your Productivity

21 Ways

Harrison Li

Table of Contents

Foreword

1. Use the passion energy.

2. Stop the so-called multitasking.

3. Focus on one goal.

4. Follow your intuition.

5. Save time from your cleansing.

6. Save time from your eating habits.

7. Save time from your sleeping habits.

8. Schedule time blocks.

9. Prevent time-dragging tasks.

10. Simplify your environment.

11. Prioritize tasks by importance.

12. Have good eating habits.

13. Forget perfectionism.

14. Learn to speed read.

15. Learn to type faster.

16. Work in a workspace environment.

17. Work in groups.

18. Set yourself deadlines.

19. Blend work and joy together.

20. Start by crawling, not sprinting.

21. Get inspiration boosts.

Afterword

Foreword

Hi,

I’m Harrison Li.

I’m the founder of Mind Fuels.

I believe that everyone in the

world has the potential to

achieve more in life, but this

requires the instructions to do so.

This is where I step in.

Every once in a while, I share awesome productivity

breakthroughs to my blog readers.

I have also created this free eBook with 21 simple, direct

and actionable ways you can use to boost your productivity

right away.

Enjoy.

Cheers,

Harrison Li

http://mindfuels.net/

You may share this in any way with the restrictions of

usage without credits, commercial use and modifications.

1. Use the passion energy.

“If you really want to do something, you'll find a way. If

you don't, you'll find an excuse.” ― Jim Rohn

What separates a happy working man from an unhappy

working man is: passion.

Passion is a natural productivity force.

A person doing tasks he does not truly enjoy or find

interest in will never be able to achieve peak performance

in productivity.

The key message is here is never to live your life in the

shoes of another – do what you want, not what society

wants.

Don’t waste your time doing something you hate, follow

your passion, or at least first achieve financial stability and

find a way to substitute the work you hate with the work

you love (by then it won’t be work anymore).

Be authentic.

2. Stop the so-called multitasking.

There’s no such thing as multitasking.

The only effective and existent multitasking combination

in the world is a strongly familiarized set of physical acts

with a mentally challenging task.

Example: you could walk and talk on the phone at the

same time.

Studies have revealed that other sorts of multitasking that

you believe exist are simply “quick-switching” between

various tasks.

The problem with quick-switching is that every time you

switch from one task to another, the focus has to be

recalibrated.

Because you constantly readjust your focus, it ruins

productivity in 2 ways:

1. Readjustment to another task takes time to re-focus.

2. You never tend to achieve high-quality work

because of your weak focus.

Numerous of studies have confirmed that multitasking

brings no benefits at all compared to not multitasking.

Stop multitasking today, and start single-tasking.

3. Focus on one goal.

Taking the last point into a bigger scale, you should also

never work on too many goals at once.

Cliche advice – and it’s true.

For the best output, how many goals should you work on at

once?

All I can tell you is there’s no magic number but if you

want a rock-solid answer it’d be 1.

The truth is, the more goals you have, the more you split

up your time, focus, attention, energy and all other factors

to your other tasks.

It’s best to specialize on 1 project at once, 1 goal, 1 dream

and one task right now.

While it may be inevitable to achieve the number 1, it is

definitely possible to cut down your list of to-do items to a

more compact version.

4. Follow your intuition.

Life is often made a lot more complicated than it is.

Why?

Because we think too much; we think of all the possibilities,

we pre-calculate everything, we plan everything ahead, we

worry, we guess, we assume and all else hypothetical.

While certain cases are beneficial, most are non-essential

and a waste of time and energy.

If you want to achieve high productivity, you’ve got to free

your mind of unnecessary thoughts and learn to follow

your intuition.

Whatever first comes to your mind, do it.

Don’t hesitate, don’t calculate the pros & cons – don’t think

too much.

Obviously, this excludes scenarios that you know you’ll

need some serious thoughts into.

But the lesson is, don’t overcomplicate life when it doesn’t

need to be.

5. Save time from your cleansing.

Essential daily habits are a big target for saving up time,

and cleansing is one common reducible factor.

In fact, a tiny percentage of people around the world

(including those I have met and know) shower once every

several days and maybe even once per week.

Their philosophy is that daily showers are not necessary to

survive, plus, they have developed the ability to ignore the

basics of hygiene e.g. uncomfortableness, oily hair and

body odor.

Limiting showers will certainly save time, I sometimes

shower once per two days (if condition-permitting),

especially in winter.

This also means no baths.

For showers, I have a personal rule of no more than 10

minutes max, and if I decide to skip a day’s shower, I’d

only briefly wash my hair in the sink.

Learn to speed up your cleansing process, stop thinking

and just focus on cleaning your body – you can even do a

countdown in your head for 10 seconds to make yourself

move into the next cleaning area.

6. Save time from your eating habits.

Eating is also a daily habit that time can be saved up from.

I have yet to know people who fast for a day to save up

eating time but I do know a lot of people who skip

breakfast.

There’s a concept called intermittent fasting which

incorporates periods of fasting in your day e.g. eating only

from noon to 8pm every day.

Apart from talking about skipping meals, there are other

ways you can speed up this process:

Eat fast-food (but healthy, please).

Get a delivery service for cooked meals, order and

pay in advance for the next week/month too.

Liquify your meal, don’t eat a salad – drink a glass

of green juice.

If you cook, chop food into tiny bite-sized pieces for

faster swallowing.

For homemade lunchboxes, prepare lots of them in

advance.

And, avoid long social chit-chats accompanied by most

meals.

7. Save time from your sleeping habits.

Again, sleep is an essential daily habit capable for freeing

up more time.

If you’re an adult, you need around 7-9 hours of shut-eye

every night.

Now, I won’t be telling you to simply cut a few hours off

your sleep, you need it for health.

But here’s the right way to reduce sleep without

challenging your body.

It’s called polyphasic sleep.

Most of us are monophasic sleepers that means we sleep

once per day, some of us (Mexicans, Spaniards…etc.) sleep

biphasically and break their sleep into two times a day – a

core sleep at night with a nap after noon.

The more you break up your sleep, the less total sleep you

need.

The science behind this method is to purposely train your

brain to go into REM stage (where actual energy comes

from) as soon as possible to skip the NREM stages (body

maintenance) which take up most of the time – in other

words time wasted.

The most realistic way to exploit sleep is the biphasic sleep

pattern as you only need 6.3 hours per day instead of

monophasic sleep that you need 8, and it’s easy to

incorporate.

Check out this guide on how to hack your sleep.

8. Schedule time blocks.

If you think you are a robot who can work all day long

without breaks, and at least feel more productive because

you’ve been working the whole time – you’re not.

It’s been confirmed many times.

Getting a short break after periods of productive sessions is

currently the best option for the highest output.

These are two common options:

1. 90 mins work sessions followed by 15 mins breaks.

2. 25 mins work sessions followed by 5 mins breaks.

Either way, you’re going to achieve more than using all of

your minutes for work.

A good way to time yourself is to use an online stopwatch

or the one on your phone.

Don’t go for the little extra when it’s break time, as soon as

you hear the timer, stop everything immediately.

Similarly, if you hear your break finish, get to work right

away.

9. Prevent time-dragging tasks.

“If people are constantly falling off a cliff, you could place

ambulances under the cliff or build a fence on the top of

the cliff. We are placing all too many ambulances under

the cliff.” — Denis Burkitt

Time-dragging tasks are the #1 contributor to

procrastination and time wastage.

What are time-dragging tasks?

They are tasks that have no specific boundaries of time

required for completion.

This means:

All social media networking.

Youtube, movies and all types of video.

Listening to music.

Purposelessly surfing the web, blogs and reading

interesting but useless stuff.

And you know more.

If you can’t find an end to a medium, it’s a time-dragging

task. The longer you use it, the longer you want to use it.

Ways to counter this:

Time yourself with a stopwatch and do these in

break time.

Prevent yourself doing them in the beginning.

Unplug your internet cable outright (best approach).

It really takes self-control.

10. Simplify your environment.

The environment you often spend time in means a lot to

your overall productivity.

Too much fluff around you will give you more mental

stress and hinder your workflow.

Speak minimalism.

There are people who own less than 300, 200 and even 60

possessions. Check this out.

This is what you can do to simplify:

De-clutter your workplace.

Re-organize your books by categories.

Stack up your paperwork in the right places with

labels.

Throw away things that don’t matter.

Hide messy things in a drawer e.g. clips, pins…etc.

Hate the concept of excessiveness.

Simplify.

11. Prioritize tasks by importance.

Every day starting from the morning until the night, the

amount of energy you have will gradually decrease.

This is why we have to carefully prioritize what we should

do and do the right tasks at the right time.

Make a to-do list for your day the night before.

Highlight one or more most important tasks (MITs) and do

them as soon as possible when the next day begins.

This means:

Don’t get close to any time-dragging tasks in the

morning.

Do tasks that require creativity juice ASAP – here’s

how to get more ideas.

Leave your games and free time to the end of the

day.

Start your day with big tasks, not small.

12. Have good eating habits.

You are what you eat.

This is cliche advice but you MUST do it.

It’s a completely different thing to speak than to do but for

me, my discipline is strong enough to restrict myself into

an extremely healthy diet (also because I have eczema).

Each meal:

Must be in ratio of 50% veggies, 25% carbs and 25%

protein.

Must be in balance on of 80% alkaline foods and 20%

acidifying foods.

Food rules:

No gluten.

No dairy products.

Nothing made artificially.

No foods high in natural chemicals.

No nightshades e.g. potatoes, tomatoes,

eggplant…etc.

No flavour enhancements e.g. sugar, commercial

salt (sea salt is okay), spices, MSG…etc.

I eat only plain, fresh, organic and natural foods.

For me, this is the closest to the definition of best.

Honestly, I’d break rules every once in a while due to social

pressure, but after that I’d immediately go back to my diet,

or else where’s the joy of life?

13. Forget perfectionism.

Just accept the fact that nothing is perfect.

I know you know what I’m talking about, it’s about going

with our first thoughts, first drafts, first answers…

In certain cases, getting as close as to perfect is extremely

essential such as for writing a book, drafting your speech

and various other tasks that require top-notch precision.

But there’s still a way to reduce the effects of time wastage

due to perfectionism.

When you are working on a task, never rewind. Keep

moving forward and don’t go back until you’ve finished it.

For example: if you are writing a book you will continue

to write and write without using the backspace button,

because every time you go back you’ll have to rewire your

thoughts and that ultimately means wasting time.

Allow yourself to make mistakes, keep going. Separate your

proof-reading and writing into two distinct tasks, don’t

blend them into one.

14. Learn to speed read.

Many of our daily habits can be sped up, and reading is one

definitely improvable case.

It’s called speed reading.

You’ve probably heard of it, it’s a skill that you can train to

increase your readings speed.

Key points:

No re-reading anything.

Group several words together and read them at once.

Read from left-to-right then right-to-left for the

next line and so on.

Get used to skipping useless words such as “a”, “an”,

“the”…etc.

It’s absolutely practicable.

However, you should avoid speed reading for arbitrary

information e.g. dates, specific rules…etc.

15. Learn to type faster.

Just as to writing faster, there’s no reason not to type faster.

I learned how to properly type when I was in primary

school with a program called Typing Tournament.

Anyway, here are typing lessons you can use.

And here’s an online typing test (1 minute test) to test your

typing speed right now. I just scored 96 words per minute

(WPM) with some errors so about 80WPM.

The average typing speed is around 36WPM. So again,

there’s no reason not to be above average!

I find 2 important aspects of good typing speed:

1. Not having to look at your keyboard while typing.

2. Knowing which fingers to hit which keys – to have a

basic knowledge of your positioning.

I think that my speed being around 80 is good enough, and

there’s no need to strive for the fastest. Since there isn’t too

much practical use behind a lightning fast typing speed,

tests give us something to copy; normally we would need to

think about what to type!

16. Work in a workspace environment.

If you want to rocket-boost your productivity, do your task

in the matching environment.

This means, even if you are able to work at home, get

outside and work at Starbucks or in the library.

Your environment will have strong influence on what you

do; by being in the right place, you are allowing yourself to

fully focus without getting distracted into the wrong tasks

e.g. at home sitting on the sofa + an array of time wasting

possibilities.

The cliche: do the right thing at the right time.

The new one: do the right thing at the right time at the

right place.

Many people can get productive at home too, but if we’re

talking about peak performance, then working at the right

environment will push you to your limits.

17. Work in groups.

“Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins

championships.” – Michael Jordan

Teamwork is always better than individual work.

And, competition pushes people to their limits because at

the end, no one wants to lose.

What this means to you is, for the task you’re working on,

you could partner up with someone and work together.

Working in groups has great advantages:

It will push you to want to be the better one.

Reinforce each other to stay on track.

Get real and honest feedback.

Bond with other people while doing work – which is

a double win and a balance between work and

sociality.

Get instant help, solutions, suggestions and ideas

right away.

Feel happy by helping others too – which builds

authority, credibility, good impressions and

expertise.

Speak teamwork.

18. Set yourself deadlines.

Deadlines don’t sound as scary as they are.

Because of the fact deadlines restrict your flexibility, it

means that you won’t have freedom.

The truth is freedom hinders productivity.

If you want to complete a specific amount of work, setting

yourself to do it in a timeframe is the best option.

The power of deadlines may seem weak just from speaking

about it, but once you have marked a task down on your

calendar, notepad or to-do list (I recommend a physical

one), you will develop the obligation to follow your goals.

19. Blend work and joy together.

Doing work is boring and tiring.

Having fun is awesome.

What if work was fun, wouldn’t you never have to worry

about it again?

While easier said than done, it is possible to make your

work fun and arousing.

Here’s how:

Eliminate all negative thoughts about work – stop

looking at it as a form of torture.

Start associating positive thoughts to your “work” by

genuinely liking and enjoying what you do.

Make your task fun by adding a twist to your normal

routine for example: writing might be boring but

you could look up different styles and techniques

and literary devices and try to implement them with

your creativity.

Looking up on the internet about the interesting

facts and inspirational feats about your subject –

often what you have to do may seem boring because

you don’t know the root purpose or facts behind it.

The goal is to find the source of energy given from passion,

and naturally your work becomes an enjoyable experience.

20. Start by crawling, not sprinting.

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

– Lao Tzu

Whatever you do, don’t start big.

It sounds good to be outside of the box to start big to be

remarkable and unique, but even “big” has a limit.

Learn to take small steps.

Starting is often the biggest barrier to doing any tasks, the

best way to counter this resistance is to take small steps.

This helps:

Start starting. Yes, literally, start starting.

De-stress the overall process.

Actually get a little bit of work done rather than

procrastinating and worrying.

Get a sense of accomplishment from the baby step.

Reduces your unwantingness to work.

Build up momentum.

Ultimately, taking a small step marks the beginning of your

productive journey. Once you have started, you will

continue.

Writing a book? Aim to write 1000 words per day. No. Aim

to write 200 words per day. No. Just write 1 sentence. No.

Just open the folder and open the document.

Now, go back each step slowly. This applies to all tasks.

50 push-ups? Just get on the ground first.

21. Get inspiration boosts.

Inspiration is one of the strongest feelings you can ever get.

When you feel inspired, you automatically feel a burst of

energy within you to do the same but to pursue your goal.

And that’s why I highly encourage you to find inspiration

to boost your productivity.

Where to find them?

Read awesome quotes.

Read success stories online (just Google [your

interest] + “success stories”).

Read books of your interests.

Listen to podcasts (I listen to Entrepreneur on Fire).

Read Q&As with experts and interviews.

Watch video content that inspire you (I love Shark

Tank). You can watch TED talks.

Meet experts of your field.

I find the best inspiration comes from making a goal that I

personally want to achieve, and working towards it, every

little progress that I’ve achieved will act as a source of

motivation for me to keep going.

Afterword

If you find this eBook to be utterly trash, then I apologize

for wasting your time, please close this window.

But if you find the content useful, please be friendly and

share your new discovery to friends and family.

Let me thank you in advance!

For more awesome productivity content designed to help

you achieve more in life, don’t miss out the stuff I’m

pushing out on the blog (my existing readers love it!).

Become a reader of Mind Fuels now! (it’s all free)

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