10 Steps to Ultimate Productivity Course

Michael Sliwinski

How to manage email, use inboxes, organize projects and tame your chaos - to live a happy life! 10 short 5-minute lessons jam-packed with my best productivity tips and tricks

Episodes

  1. 03/24/2016

    Lesson 10 - How to Put Your Perfect Productivity System in Place (today!)

    Welcome to the last step of our "10-steps to Ultimate Productivity Course". Here I'll help you start putting your own productivity system in place. We've covered a lot of material in the past lessons, don't let it overwhelm you, let's go! As we said, what's on your mind is what's bothering you, so make sure to put your thoughts, documents and everything else into one big inbox. Literally put them all in a box. Now start processing the box until it's at zero. Decide what to do with a piece of paper. If it's actionable add to your task and project management system (like Nozbe), if it's reference material, put it in your drawer, or scan it to Evernote, Dropbox or Nozbe or somewhere else. Decide on each and every element and move on. Keep on keeping on until the inbox is empty. Don't worry if after doing all this your productivity system is not perfect, you'll tweak it as you go. Congratulations, you've done your first step. Watch this lesson on video at: http://ProductivityCourse.com/10

    6 min

  2. 03/21/2016

    Lesson 9 - How to Manage Email Efficiently

    Welcome to Step 9 of our "10-steps to Ultimate Productivity Course". Here I'll share with you my best practices and tips when it comes to email. How I get email done every day. And how I integrate it with my productivity system. One thing is your productivity tool and the one you choose can be Nozbe or any other tool that has most of the characteristics we mentioned in previous lessons. Your tool should encourage you NOT to "organize tasks" but to really "get tasks done" and move forward to achieve your goals! Now, the other tool most of us have to use every single day is Email - it's used by everyone. Most of us see more and more messages coming at us day in and day out. Here are some tips that might help you get the email chaos under control. Watch this lesson on video at: http://ProductivityCourse.com/9

    6 min

  3. 03/17/2016

    Lesson 8 - How to Review Your Productivity System Regularly

    Welcome to Step 8 of our "10-steps to Ultimate Productivity Course". Here we'll make you schedule 1-2 hours a week for a meeting with yourself to review your productivity system. Trust me, it's a very important meeting. So you have mastered the previous 7 lessons of our course. You know how to clear your head, organize tasks into projects, define next actions, work from anywhere and with anyone... and use contexts and reference material. That's great. But even if you've done all that and you feel like a Superhuman, you still might fall off that wagon very quickly... if you don't review it all regularly. Productivity experts suggest you should schedule a regular, weekly meeting with yourself to review everything you've done and everything you're set out to do. David Allen of GTD fame calls it a "Weekly Review" and he says it's the moment when he thinks ahead for a week... and he knows, he'll think again in a week or so... and he basically does stuff without thinking in between. Watch this lesson on video at: http://ProductivityCourse.com/8

    5 min

  4. 03/15/2016

    Lesson 7 - How to Manage Your Reference Material (documents)

    Welcome to Step 7 of our "10-steps to Ultimate Productivity Course". Here we'll learn to deal with our "reference materials" - all the documents that are required to get certain tasks done. Productive life starts and ends with to-do lists... but there is something in between - the reference material and all the helpful documents you need, to really get your tasks done. Your documents, notes, files are not an integral part of your productivity system, but they are the "backbone” of information you need and they provide key insights that help you get a task done. While I spend most of my day making sure the tasks get done, I would be lost without the remaining two parts of the puzzle - notes and files. Watch this lesson on video at: http://ProductivityCourse.com/7

    4 min

  5. 03/10/2016

    Lesson 6 - How to Work in Contexts (categorize tasks)

    Welcome to part 6 of our "10-steps to Ultimate Productivity Course". Here we'll talk about "Contexts" - a concept borrowed from the David Allen's book "Getting Things Done". In short "GTD". Well, you already are a productivity ninja as you've mastered the way of adding tasks, organizing them into projects and getting them done from your "Priority" list. Although I'm not a big fan of prioritizing, I like "categorizing" to-do list thanks to a method from GTD called "contexts". The "Contexts" concept is another weapon to help you clear these lists and get more done. As David Allen says - a Context can be a place, a tool or an environment.... which can be applied to various tasks in different projects. Watch this lesson on video at: http://ProductivityCourse.com/6

    5 min

  6. 03/07/2016

    Lesson 5 - How to Communicate Through Tasks

    Welcome to Step 5 of our "10-steps to Ultimate Productivity Course". Here we'll talk about how you can learn to work with other people and start to communicate through tasks to get things done. Newsflash: Everyone's day equals 24 hours. You can't stretch it. You can't bend the time. And if you can, please tell me how, I really want to know! But for now, let's assume - it's impossible. Let's just face it :-) Reality check: You can't do everything better than everyone. You're not always the right man for the job. In order to succeed you need to embrace the fact, that others can do a "good enough" job and help you succeed. If you think explaining stuff to others is a waste of time, think again. It's an investment. Once they get the hang of it, they'll do an amazing job. You'll be surprised. And relieved :-) Watch this lesson on video at: http://ProductivityCourse.com/5

    5 min

  7. 03/03/2016

    Lesson 4 - How to Be Productive on the Go

    Welcome to Step 4 of our "10-steps to Ultimate Productivity Course". Here we'll focus on getting things done not only in your traditional work environment but also anywhere else... with your mobile smart phone or a tablet computer... or a piece of paper. The strength of a real productivity system starts with its accessibility and being ready for you anytime, anywhere, anyhow. It's also important to have the information on your devices always in sync. If you're doing this productivity course, I'm sure you've already somehow embraced the concept of the cloud. The Internet cloud. Remember, productive people are not afraid of the cloud ;-) This simply means, your data is securely stored on some distant server. All you do is take a device you have at hand like a computer, smartphone or tablet, and access this data. Watch this lesson on video at: http://ProductivityCourse.com/4

    5 min

  8. 02/29/2016

    Lesson 3 - How to Manage your Priorities (Next Actions)

    Welcome to Step 3 of our "10-steps to Ultimate Productivity Course". Here I'll try to help you find that next physical task that helps you get closer to getting a project done. You'll ask yourself many times over: "What's my next action here?" To me, the "Next Actions" concept is the killer feature of the Getting Things Done system by David Allen. The concept of having so many tasks and deciding on the "next physical action that moves things forward" proved to be a very powerful technique for me.  When I discovered the book by David Allen and read it, I understood what's the difference between traditional to-do lists and tasks managers ... and applications based on or inspired by Getting Things Done... like Nozbe :-) Watch this lesson on video at: http://ProductivityCourse.com/3

    6 min

  9. 02/25/2016

    Lesson 2 - How to Manage Your Projects

    Welcome to Step 2 of our "10-steps to Ultimate Productivity Course". Here I'll show you that what you used to think as a task, might actually be a project... when it requires more tasks to complete. You'll learn to create many more projects for yourself than you used to. Like it or not, you will become a Project Manager. We tend to think Project Managers are the guys who manage big investments, take-overs or big deals. We are all Project Managers as we manage our day-to-day tasks and projects of our lives. Anything that requires more than one thing to do is a project. Here's a list of possible projects: - "Birthday for my brother" - all the tasks that require organizing a birthday party - "Presentation for a meeting" - things to prepare like: outline, sketch, slides, clipart, and more. I guess you get the idea. It’s easy to fall into the trap of adding a project as one task... and the task in our eyes becomes huge and unmanageable. That's why if something requires more steps, make it a project and divide it into small, manageable tasks. Watch this lesson on video at: http://ProductivityCourse.com/2

    6 min

  10. 02/22/2016

    Lesson 1 - How to Put Everything into Your Inbox

    Welcome to Step 1 of our "10-steps to Ultimate Productivity Course". Here we'll deal with the fact that you are thinking about too many things at once. You need to take stuff off your mind and put it all in your trusted productivity system. My wife always laughs at me saying I'm like an old computer with default settings - I recognize only 16 basic colors and I pretend to be a multi-tasking guy... where, actually, I can only do one thing at a time. I must admit there is some truth in that. Just like David Allen says in his book "Getting Things Done", when your mind has too much to think about, you can't actually get anything done. You can't work efficiently when your mind is being distracted. That's why you need your trusted system where you can easily put stuff into it. The easier you can throw stuff at it, the better. That's the first secret. The second is to make sure you process this stuff later. The place you put stuff into is called an "Inbox" - a place where all of your thoughts, files, documents, notes, emails, voicemails... where all of your inputs go. Watch this lesson on video at: http://ProductivityCourse.com/1

    6 min

  11. 02/15/2016

    Introduction to the "10 Steps To Ultimate Productivity" course

    Welcome to my "10 Steps to Ultimate Productivity" course. Over the next 10 lessons I'll try to teach you everything I've learned so far that helps me stay productive, get a lot done and have a happy life. My name is Michael Sliwinski and I'm the founder of Nozbe - one of the leading productivity applications on the Internet. Every day, thousands upon thousands of busy professionals and teams are getting things done using Nozbe's web application as well as our native apps for the Mac, Windows, iPhone, iPad and Android. I'm also the editor of the Productive! Magazine - a completely free PDF and iPad magazine. In each issue I get a chance to interview some real overachievers and many people wiser than me post fantastic articles. Be sure to check it out and read past issues. You'll be inspired. I'm also running a video show where I'm constantly trying out new productivity techniques. You can see what's new, what's helping me now and, equally important, what's not working for me at all. Each show is short and to the point. Watch this lesson on video at: http://ProductivityCourse.com/0

    5 min
  • 11 Episodes

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How to manage email, use inboxes, organize projects and tame your chaos - to live a happy life! 10 short 5-minute lessons jam-packed with my best productivity tips and tricks

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