Improvement doesn’t come in one fell swoop. Improving takes time, effort, determination, and focus.
Becoming good at things may be considered a lost art, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t always be working on getting better at something everyday.
In this post we’ll showcase three essays from The99Percent.com (one of Corbett and I’s favorite sites on the web) that will teach you how to improve in the best way possible.
1. The Key to Creating Remarkable Things
How often do you start your day focused on your inbox instead of your outbox? You wake up and check your email, Twitter, Facebook, etc. and before you know it precious hours of the most productive part of your day are gone.
In this essay, Mark McGuinness lays out a simple strategy for switching your day around.
- Creative work first, reactive work second.
- Tune out distractions.
- Make exceptions for VIPs.
- Be really efficient at reactive work.
The thing is, if you want to create something truly remarkable, it won’t be built in a day. A great novel, a stunning design, a game-changing software application, a revolutionary company – this kind of thing takes time, thought, craft, and persistence. And on any given day, it will never appear as “urgent” as those four emails (in the last half-hour) from Client X or Colleague Y, asking for things you’ve already given them or which they probably don’t really need. So if you’re going to prioritize this kind of work – your real work – you may have to go through a wall of anxiety in order to get it done. - Mark McGuinness
2. What Happened to Downtime?
In this age of technology, we have the ability to always be consuming new information. We explored this theory in our post 8 Wastes of Time That Can Actually Make You Smart and we discussed how you could use every waking moment to continually improve yourself.
Scott Belsky, author of Making Ideas Happen, argues instead that we need more downtime in our lives. He lays out five strategies for having more downtime for yourself.
- Have rituals for unplugging.
- Daily doses of deep thinking.
- Meditation and naps to clear the mind.
- Self-awareness and psychological investment.
- Protect the state of no-intent.
There has been much discussion about the value of the “creative pause” – a state described as “the shift from being fully engaged in a creative activity to being passively engaged, or the shift to being disengaged altogether.” This phenomenon is the seed of the break-through “a-ha!” moments that people so frequently report having in the shower. In these moments, you are completely isolated, and your mind is able to wander and churn big questions without interruption. - Scott Belsky
3. 10 Laws of Productivity
Because there is so much focus around the web on productivity systems, strategies, and theory you might think about just skipping right over this post. Don’t.
If all of the best resources on productivity got together and had “best of” contest, this post would be the top ten.
- Break the seal of hesitation.
- Start small.
- Prototype, prototype, prototype.
- Create simple objectives for projects, and revisit them regularly.
- Work on your project a little bit each day.
- Develop a routine.
- Break big, long-term projects into smaller chunks or “phases”.
- Prune away superfluous meetings (and their attendees).
- Practice saying “No.”
- Remember that rules – even productivity rules – are made to be broken.
With projects that require a serious infusion of creative juice – developing a new business plan, writing a novel, or just learning a new skill – it’s incredibly important to maintain momentum. Just as when you run everyday, the exercise gets easier and easier, the same thing happens with your brain. Stimulate it regularly each day, and those juices start to flow more freely.
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What strategies do you use to make continuous progress everyday? How do you improve at what you do?
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Thanks guys for this valuable article! The essays are great resources and helpful reminders.
Personally I have profited a lot by the little-and-often approach. For example I made it a habit to practice singing each and every day. Maybe just 2 minutes, but very focused. I am always practicing the difficult stuff that somehow seems doable, something like switiching between the deep chest voice and the high head voice. It’s a real slow progress, but it’s happening and recently I have received a lot of praise for my voice and singing style.
Awesome.
I’m struggling with the “Break the seal of hesitation” part.
Lately I’ve had serious issues about it, even having lunch with coworkers has made hesitate about going or not for an hour or so!
damn…
Love your research. Thanks Caleb!
Scott’s research rocks! I may have to get the book.
PS I take up a new skill every year. Surfing, Photography, etc.
Good job with the site!
It just hit me that Kaizen would be a good addition to this article.
As I’ve made the transition from a job to doing my own real “work,” (working from home on the blog, freelancing) I have found that less and less I’ve been able to allow myself “downtime.”
I’ve had to make it a conscious effort to put the phone away as I prepare for sleep- that time between laying down and falling asleep are usually the best time for those “aha” moments yet oddly enough I find the just “sitting around” really uncomfortable. I will pick up the phone, play a game, check email or surf a blog while waiting for sleep to come and I’ve started to feel genuinely fatigued from information overload until I realized that small habits like this (not even allowing my brain to slow down and process the day before falling asleep) was a huge contributing factor.
For the next few weeks I’ll be working on developing a routine that allows for those creative bursts without feeling as if I need to be chained to a computer or mobile device constantly! Great post.
Great article. The habit of creating first is a huge benefit. You can always fill your day with the little time wasting activities of life. The longer the day goes on, the more of a tendency we have of just getting by until the end of the day.
The concept of creating first brings to mind the visual of a jar that we have probably all seen. If you take an empty jar and add the small stuff first, you will never fit in the big stuff. If you add the big stuff first, you can fit in all the small stuff around the big stuff. Works in life, business, and personal situations.
My problem recently has been downtime. I sleep for about 5 hours, wake up and go to my day job. I get there about 1 hour early and work on my business. During that first hour, I try to do my writing.
Near the end, I will put my new blog post out on social media and check email for about 10 minutes. At lunch, I am reading e-books or working on my work stuff.
When I get home, it’s family time until 8p or so. I work from then until about 11p on my work.
I am trying to get so much done I rarely take any downtime and I can see the effect on my creativity.