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I wrote a blog post for a client a while ago about this topic.7 Things You Need To Stop Doing To Be More Productive, Backed By ScienceWhen I was 17 years old, I used to work and study for about 20 hours a day. I went to school, did my homework during breaks and managed a not-for-profit organization at night. At that time, working hard landed me countless national campaigns, opportunities to work with A-list organizations and a successful career. As I got older, I started thinking differently. I realized that working harder is not always the right path to success. Sometimes, working less can actually produce better results.Consider a small business owner, who works non-stop. However, working hard won’t help him compete with his multi-million competitors. Time is a limited commodity. An entrepreneur can work 24 hours a day and 7 days a week (the most amount of time anyone can work, really). His or her competitor can always spend more money, build a bigger team and spend a lot more time on the same project. Then why have small startups accomplished things that larger corporations couldn’t? Facebook bought Instagram, a 13-employee company for a billion dollars. Snapchat, a young startup with 30 employees is turning down offers from tech giants Facebook and Google. Part of their successes were based on luck — the rest is based on efficiency.The key to success is not hard working but smart working.There’s a notable distinction between being busy and being productive. Being busy doesn’t necessarily mean you’re being productive. Being productive is less about time management and more on managing your energy. It is the business of life. We need to learn how to spend the least amount of energy to get the most benefits. I am so lucky to work with an amazing team here at Filemobile. Everyone always challenges me and helps me sort my priorities to become more productive. I learned to reduce my work week from 80 hours to 40 hours, and get a lot more work donein the process. In other words, less is more.Here are 7 I things I stopped doing to become more productive.1. Stop working overtime and increase your productivityHave you ever wondered where the 40-hour work week came from? In 1926, Henry Ford, American industrialist and founder of Ford Motor Company, conducted experiments with interesting results: when you decrease your daily working hours from 10 to 8, and shorten the work week from 6 days to 5, your productivity increases.Source: Calculating Loss of Productivity Due to Overtime Using Published Charts — Fact or FictionThe more you work, the less effective and productive you are going to become over both short and long term. “Scheduled Overtime Effect on Construction Projects”, a report issued by The Business Roundtable in 1980 states.“Where a work schedule of 60 or more hours per week is continued longer than about two months, the cumulative effect of decreased productivity will cause a delay in the completion date beyond that which could have been realized with the same crew size on a 40-hour week.”Source: Calculating Loss of Productivity Due to Overtime Using Published Charts — Fact or FictionIn an article for AlterNet, editor Sara Robinson referenced research conducted by the US military that revealed that “losing one hour of sleep per night for a week will cause a level of cognitive degradation equivalent to a .10 blood alcohol level.” You can get fired for coming to work drunk, but it is deemed acceptable to pull an all-nighter.Irrespective of how well you were able to get on with your day after that most recent night without sleep, it is unlikely that you felt especially upbeat and joyous about the world. Your more-negative-than-usual perspective will have resulted from a generalized low mood, which is a normal consequence of being overtired. More important than just the mood, this mind-set is often accompanied by decreases in willingness to think and act proactively, control impulses, feel positive about yourself, empathize with others, and generally use emotional intelligence.Source: The Secret World of Sleep: The Surprising Science of the Mind at RestIt’s important for us not to overwork ourselves and get enough sleep to maintain a high level of productivity. Next time you’re wondering why you may not be working productively, the reason may be simple as you beingone of 70% of people who doesn’t get enough sleep.Did you know?Leonardo da Vinci took multiple naps a day and slept less at night.The French Emperor Napoleon was not shy about taking naps. He indulged daily.Though Thomas Edison was embarrassed about his napping habit, he also practiced his ritual daily.Eleanor Roosevelt, the wife of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, used to boost her energy by napping before speaking engagements.Gene Autry, “the Singing Cowboy,” routinely took naps in his dressing room between performances.President John F. Kennedy ate his lunch in bed and then settled in for a nap—every day!Oil industrialist and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller napped every afternoon in his office.Winston Churchill’s afternoon nap was a non-negotiable. He believed it helped him get twice as much done each day.President Lyndon B. Johnson took a nap every afternoon at 3:30 p.m. in order to break his day up into “two shifts.”Though criticized for it, President Ronald Reagan famously took naps as well.Source: 5 Reasons Why You Should Take a Nap Every Day — Michael HyattOn a personal note, since I started getting at least 7 to 8 hours of sleep a day, I’ve noticed a change: I became a lot more productive and got a lot more work done than when I worked 16 hours a day. Who knew sleeping was such a great tool for marketers?2. Don’t say “yes” too oftenAccording to the Pareto Principle, 20% of the effort produce 80% of the results; however, 20% of the results consumes 80% of the effort.Instead of working harder, we should focus primarily on those efforts that produce 80% of the results and forgo the rest. We will have more time to focus on the most important tasks. We should stop saying “yes” to tasks that bring low or almost no result.“The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say “no” to almost everything.” — Warren Buffet.This begs a question: what should you say “yes” and what should you say “no” to? If you can’t figure if something is going to be worth your time, consider running a simple split test. Track everything you do and optimize if it is possible.Most of us say yes more often than we should because it is so much easier than saying no. Nobody wants to be the bad guy.In a 2012 study published in the Journal of Consumer Research, researchers split 120 students in 2 groups. One group was trained to use “I can’t”, while the other was trained to use “I don’t”. The results were interesting:The students who told themselves “I can’t eat X” chose to eat the chocolate candy bar 61% of the time. Meanwhile, the students who told themselves “I don’t eat X” chose to eat the chocolate candy bars only 36% of the time. This simple change in terminology significantly improved the odds that each person would make a more healthy food choice.Next time you need to avoid saying yes, say “I don’t”.Another great trick to avoid activities that don’t add enough value into your life is the 20-second rule: give yourself 20 seconds longer for activities you shouldn’t be doing.Lower the activation energy for habits you want to adopt and raise it for habits you want to avoid. The more we can lower or even eliminate the activation energy for our desired actions, the more we enhance our ability to jump-start positive change.Source: The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work3. Stop doing everything yourself and start letting people help youAt some point in my career, I was managing a very large community and couldn’t handle it. I tried to do everything myself. I burnt out, but the community ended up taking over and managing itself. Surprisingly, members did a better job than I have ever done. I learned the power of community and why brands need user-generated content.Consumers understand what they want and how they want it better than any marketer. Did you know that, according to Octoly, user-generated videos are viewed 10 times more than brand-generated videos on YouTube? When seeking information about a particular brand,over half (51%) of Americans trust user-generated content more than the content on the brand website (16%) or media coverage on the brand (14%). It’s important for marketers to open up and seek help from the brand’s community.Source: Earned Media Rankings on YouTube — OctolyBeing a great content marketer is not about creating the best content, but building a great community that will generate high-quality content for you.It’s important for us to realize we can seek help when needed. We cannot do everything ourselves. It is better for you to let someone who can do a better job taking over some of your tasks. It will give you more time to focus on your most important tasks. Instead of wasting your time trying to figure something out yourself, let the experts help you.A lot of time, even if your friends can’t help you, having them around can help you become more productive.Just having friends nearby can push you toward productivity. “There’s a concept in ADHD treatment called the ‘body double,’ ” says David Nowell, Ph.D., a clinical neuropsychologist from Worcester, Massachusetts. “Distractable people get more done when there is someone else there, even if he isn’t coaching or assisting them.” If you’re facing a task that is dull or difficult, such as cleaning out your closets or pulling together your receipts for tax time, get a friend to be your body double.Source: Friendfluence: The Surprising Ways Friends Make Us Who We Are4. Stop being a perfectionist“We found that perfectionism trips up professors on the way to research productivity. The more perfectionistic the professor, the less productive they are,” Dr. Simon Sherry, a Dalhousie University Psychology Professor who conducstudy on ted a perfectionism and productivity, tells University Affairs magazine. Dr. Sherry found a robust correlation between increased perfectionism and decreased productivity.Here are some problems associated with being a perfectionist:They spend more time than required on a task.They procrastinate and wait for the perfect moment. In business, if it is the perfect moment, you are too late.They miss the big picture while being too focused on small things.Marketers often wait for the perfect moment. In doing so, they end up missing it.The perfect moment is NOW.5. Stop doing repetitive tasks and start automating it.According to a research study conducted by Tethys Solutions, A team of 5 people who spent 3%, 20%, 25%, 30% and 70% of their time on repetitive tasks respectively reduced this time to 3%, 10%, 15%, 15% and 10% after 2 months of enhancing their productivity.Source: Using Automation Software To Increase Business Productivity & Competitiveness -Tethys SolutionsA week ago, I spent 15 minutes writing a basic Python program. The idea was to generate content from the data, which I pulled from Twitter API using a Ruby bot, and use Hootsuite to bulk schedule them. While it used to take me an entire day to accomplish, it now takes me less than 5 minutes. Nowadays, whenever I do something repetitively (more than 5 times), I would ask myself if I can find a program to do it for me.You don’t have to be a coder to able to automate your repetitive tasks. It’s nice to have the skills or the resources, but it’s not a requirement. If you cannot build it, buy it.People often forget that time is money. People usually do things manually because it’s easy and requires almost no research. It is manageable to moderate 30 images on Instagram for your user-generated campaign. But if you have to manage 30 000 photos and videos from 5 different platforms, you need a good digital asset management software. At Filemobile, we help people to solve that problem generate even more user-generated content. Just like managing rich media, you can easily purchase a software to solve almost all of yourproblem on the internet.If you still can’t find a solution, you can hire an expert to help you. Keep in mind that you need to spend money to make money and that time is your most valuable commodity.Tips for marketers: check out GitHub or Google app script library. Often times, you’ll find free ready-to-use open source code that requires very little programming knowledge.6. Stop guessing and start backing up your decisions with dataIf you can optimize websites for search engines, you can optimize your lives to grow and reach your maximum potential.There are so many research studies out there that can provide answers in a range of areas. For instance, did you know that most people are more easily distracted from noon to 4PM? This random statistic comes from recent research led by Robert Matchock, an associate professor of psychology at Pennsylvania State University. Even if you can’t find the data you need, it doesn’t take a lot of time to run a split test.For instance, last week we did a few tests to figure out the best way to optimize images for Twitter in-stream preview.Keep asking yourself how you’re going to measure and optimize everything you do.7. Stop working, and have do-nothing timeMost people don’t realize that we’re essentially locking ourselves in a box when we are too focused on something. It’s important to walk away from our work once in a while and have some alone time. Alone time is good for the brain and spirit, according to The power of lonely , an article in The Boston Globe.One ongoing Harvard study indicates that people form more lasting and accurate memories if they believe they’re experiencing something alone. Another indicates that a certain amount of solitude can make a person more capable of empathy towards others. And while no one would dispute that too much isolation early in life can be unhealthy, a certain amount of solitude has been shown to help teenagers improve their moods and earn good grades in school.Source: The power of lonelyIt‘s important for us to take time for reflection. We often find the solutions when we’re not searching for them.We don’t become more productive overnight. Like everything in life, it requires efforts. Change doesn’t happen if you just sit there and wait for it. It’s important for all of us to learn more about our body and find ways to optimize our energy for a more successful and happy life.Disclosure: Filemobile was a client of ThinkRenegade, my Commerce + Digital Marketing Agency.

The Child Centered Classroom was a great sounding idea when it was introduced. After all, if we could make school less boring and meet children where they were, wouldn’t that result in better learning outcomes?The idea is that if your emphasize collaboration, social-emotional learning and giving students a voice in how or what they learn they will be more engaged and not only learn more, but learn more deeply. In the child centered classroom, the adult doesn’t so much teach, but creates an environment where the students teach themselves and each other. Ideally, the student’s learning is driven by their interests.Thinking about my own interests from middle and high school, I’m not sure how my interests would have made appropriate subjects of learning.The problem with the child-centered educational model is that in just doesn’t work. As Mathew Hunter pointed out in Standpoint Magazine,Child-Centered Learning Has Let My Pupils Down - StandpointThe progressive orthodoxy in British education has left one in five school-leavers functionally illiterate. That ethos needs to changehttps://standpointmag.co.uk/features-june-12-child-centred-learning-has-let-my-pupils-down-matthew-hunter-a-s-neil-plowden-free-schools/“Nowadays, child-centred learning is an article of faith in the state sector. Whenever I question it at work I am met with bemusement at best, but usually righteous anger. Its principles pervade everything a new teacher hears about “best practice”: avoid chalk-and-talk; don’t point out a child’s mistakes (it will harm his self-esteem); never teach anything pupils may find boring; and never, on any account, organise the pupils’ desks in rows. Islands of desks where the pupils can “group learn” are dogmatically promoted.The faults in this pedagogical outlook are normally obvious to those who have not been through the indoctrination of teacher training. By moving the onus of authority from the teacher to the child, we neglect our responsibility for teaching, which is to prepare a child for the adult world. If a child directs his own learning, his potential for advancing from the condition of childhood is unsurprisingly diminished.As Keynes might well have written, practical teachers who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence are usually the slaves of some defunct educationist. The great tragedy of this process is that once released from the ivory tower and transferred to the classroom level, child-centred education becomes less a philosophy, and more an excuse for slack, ineffective teaching. If a teacher does not have a responsibility to direct the pupils’ learning, then this is a ready justification for the directionless, chaotic atmosphere in so many of our nation’s classrooms. On the ground, child-centred learning is an ideology of low expectations.”One of the biggest flaws with the child-centered approach is it’s over-emphasis on group work. Too often, at-risk students can fall through the gaps because other students carry them.In my science classes, the lowest performing students treat group activity time as a recess to socialize through, then copy the answers from someone else at the very end.In my district, elementary and middle schools place a huge emphasis on collaboration. The net result is that I find students coming to my high school classes woefully unprepared for any sustained individual mental effort.There’s also a definite lack of basic knowledge and skills. Recently, I started noting the words that my high school students didn’t know the meaning of, or simply had trouble reading:divergeconvergeboundaryglaciercontinentreassembleaquaticcoastalplumemalleablecharacteristicAnd that was in just the last 2 weeks. This year ’ve had high school students who seem unfamiliar with the idea of a percent. These are all students who’ve had at least 9 years of formal education, much of that time working in groups.I’m also a bit dubious of the idea that we should be specifically teaching “emotional intelligence.” We don’t need to teach emotional intelligence to help students develop that trait. We just need to do 2 simple things:(1) Encourage students to read novels.Numerous studies have shown that reading novels improves emotional Intelligence in people. Numerous studies review by psychology professor David Dodell-Feder and assistant professor Diana Tamir showed that reading fiction improved emotional intelligence.“…they reviewed 14 studies that examined whether reading fiction, compared with reading nonfiction or not reading at all, had a measurable effect on subjects' empathy. Empathy was measured in a variety of ways, including the ability to read other people's expressions, to see things from other people's perspectives, and to guess how others would feel in different situations. The empathy improvement was small but statistically significant, and it was repeated across different studies and different ways of measuring empathy.It's an important finding, Art Markman, PhD, head of the Human Dimensions of Organizations program at the University of Texas, Austin,​ writes on Psychology Today's website. As he notes, subjects in the experiments generally read (or didn't read) for only a brief period of time before their empathic abilities were measured. Since that brief bit of reading fiction was enough to make an immediate difference, it seems likely that those who read fiction on a regular basis would see a sustained and perhaps more significant improvement in their ability to empathize and emotional intelligence.”I’ve been teaching for 20 years. As recently as 10 years ago, before and after school you could find more introverted students reading a book. It was common for a student who finished their assignment early to pull out a novel and read until the bell rang. When Harry Potter was at its peak, I had to rush around and make sure certain kids actually did their work, and didn’t just write down any old answer so they could get back to the adventures of wizards and muggles. Those days are gone. I don’t think I’ve seen a student reading a non-assigned novel in a couple years. And I rarely see a student pull out the odd copy of a novel assigned for English classes.If you want to improve emotional intelligence, you need to set aside part of the school day for students to read fiction. But you also need to create an atmosphere were they don’t have alternatives. That leads me to my secod recommendation.(2) Don’t allow distracting electronics on campus.Electronics in general, and smart phones in particular lowers emotional intelligence in Kids. Trying to teach a course in Emotonal Intelligence in a class, where 80% of the kids have smart phones is like using a bucket to bail water out of a boat with a gaping hole. Dr. Daniel Coleman quite literally wrote the book on Emotional Intelligence.Now a lot of our students are glued to their phones for hours a day. It makes sense because apps like texting, as well as all social media sites, are designed to be addictive. According to Business Insider, Instagram and Facebook are intentionally conditioning you to treat your phone like a drug. So strong is the draw of social media that adults can’t resist them. Kids don’t stand a chance. So the kids are sucked in.And once sucked into the world of electronic addiction, they rob children and teens of the ability to naturally interract with others. According to Dr. Goleman, this is what technology does to people in general.1. Undermines Self-awarenessMore time on technology means less time with your own thoughts and feelings, the beating heart of mindfulness. As tech dependency increases, kids live in a state of self-alienation, estranged from their emotional selves, disabling self-awareness and self-reflection. Instead of thoughtful choices, they grow more reactive and less reflective.2. Weakens Self-regulationResearch has proven tech dependence increases impulsivity and lowers frustration tolerance. Without developing the ability to self-regulate, kids remain emotionally immature and mired in early childhood behaviors such as bullying, temper tantrums and angry outbursts.3. Diminishes Social skillsEven when kids play games online with others, such faceless relationships rarely lead to true friendships. In this way, tech dependence tends to breed isolation and reclusiveness. The more tech dominates, the less community develops. This leaves kids with poor coping skills and limited tools for navigating relationships.4. Undermines EmpathyWhen screen time replaces family or friend time, kids move through the world in trance-like states, self-absorbed and detached from others. Unempathic and unsympathetic, they lack attunement and rapport. The basic building blocks of healthy compassion remain underdeveloped.5. Stunts MotivationMotivation toward achieving personal goals in life, which requires drive, sustained attention and high levels of frustration tolerance, declines rapidly. Like any addict, as kids become more dependent, they start to neglect themselves and their future. Watch what happens when tech addicted kids are suddenly forced to interact with the world. They quickly grow discontented and irritable. That’s because, unlike technology, they can't control the real world or the people in it. As a result, when faced with difficult life choices, tech dependent kids are likely to suffer symptoms of anxiety or depression.If we really wanted to improve emotional intelligence, we would ban phones, I-pods and tablet devices from school grounds. Students will hate this choice the same way smokers hated it when we barred cigarettes from airplane and resteraunts. But they will get used to it and the time the 6 or 7 hours a day where they have absolutely no access to texting, gaming, taking selfies or checking in with Snapchat or Instagram will be a huge benefit to their emotional intelligence.Girls will benefit more from this policty as, in the words of Time Magazine, Social Media hurts girls more than boys. The Guardian has reported that Depression in girls is linked to higher use of social media. The Independent has reported that Teenage girls twice as likely to be depressed due to social media than boys.It found that 12 percent of light social media users and 38 per cent of heavy social media users, defined as those who use it for five or more hours a day, showed signs of having more severe depression.Previous studies have also concluded that social media can cause depression and anxiety in teenagers.The UCL study however highlighted that girls are considerably more likely to be affected. It found that two fifths of 14-year-old females used it for more than three hours per day compared with one fifth of boys. Only 4 per cent of girls reported not using social media compared to 10 per cent of boys.A quarter of girls showed signs of clinically relevant depressive symptoms compared to 11 per cent of boys, the study found.I could go on and on on the mental health harm done to teenagers by social media. If schools could create an atmosphere where, for a mere 7 hours a day, they were 100% cut off from social media and distracting screen, we would go a log way towards improving the emotional intelligence of students.

I wrote a blog post for a client a while ago about this topic.7 Things You Need To Stop Doing To Be More Productive, Backed By ScienceWhen I was 17 years old, I used to work and study for about 20 hours a day. I went to school, did my homework during breaks and managed a not-for-profit organization at night. At that time, working hard landed me countless national campaigns, opportunities to work with A-list organizations and a successful career. As I got older, I started thinking differently. I realized that working harder is not always the right path to success. Sometimes, working less can actually produce better results.Consider a small business owner, who works non-stop. However, working hard won’t help him compete with his multi-million competitors. Time is a limited commodity. An entrepreneur can work 24 hours a day and 7 days a week (the most amount of time anyone can work, really). His or her competitor can always spend more money, build a bigger team and spend a lot more time on the same project. Then why have small startups accomplished things that larger corporations couldn’t? Facebook bought Instagram, a 13-employee company for a billion dollars. Snapchat, a young startup with 30 employees is turning down offers from tech giants Facebook and Google. Part of their successes were based on luck — the rest is based on efficiency.The key to success is not hard working but smart working.There’s a notable distinction between being busy and being productive. Being busy doesn’t necessarily mean you’re being productive. Being productive is less about time management and more on managing your energy. It is the business of life. We need to learn how to spend the least amount of energy to get the most benefits. I am so lucky to work with an amazing team here at Filemobile. Everyone always challenges me and helps me sort my priorities to become more productive. I learned to reduce my work week from 80 hours to 40 hours, and get a lot more work done in the process. In other words, less is more.Here are 7 I things I stopped doing to become more productive.1. Stop working overtime and increase your productivityHave you ever wondered where the 40-hour work week came from? In 1926, Henry Ford, American industrialist and founder of Ford Motor Company, conducted experiments with interesting results: when you decrease your daily working hours from 10 to 8, and shorten the work week from 6 days to 5, your productivity increases.Source: Calculating Loss of Productivity Due to Overtime Using Published Charts — Fact or FictionThe more you work, the less effective and productive you are going to become over both short and long term. “Scheduled Overtime Effect on Construction Projects”, a report issued by The Business Roundtable in 1980 states.“Where a work schedule of 60 or more hours per week is continued longer than about two months, the cumulative effect of decreased productivity will cause a delay in the completion date beyond that which could have been realized with the same crew size on a 40-hour week.”Source: Calculating Loss of Productivity Due to Overtime Using Published Charts — Fact or FictionIn an article for AlterNet, editor Sara Robinson referenced research conducted by the US military that revealed that “losing one hour of sleep per night for a week will cause a level of cognitive degradation equivalent to a .10 blood alcohol level.” You can get fired for coming to work drunk, but it is deemed acceptable to pull an all-nighter.Irrespective of how well you were able to get on with your day after that most recent night without sleep, it is unlikely that you felt especially upbeat and joyous about the world. Your more-negative-than-usual perspective will have resulted from a generalized low mood, which is a normal consequence of being overtired. More important than just the mood, this mind-set is often accompanied by decreases in willingness to think and act proactively, control impulses, feel positive about yourself, empathize with others, and generally use emotional intelligence.Source: The Secret World of Sleep: The Surprising Science of the Mind at RestIt’s important for us not to overwork ourselves and get enough sleep to maintain a high level of productivity. Next time you’re wondering why you may not be working productively, the reason may be simple as you being one of 70% of people who doesn’t get enough sleep.Did you know?Leonardo da Vinci took multiple naps a day and slept less at night.The French Emperor Napoleon was not shy about taking naps. He indulged daily.Though Thomas Edison was embarrassed about his napping habit, he also practiced his ritual daily.Eleanor Roosevelt, the wife of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, used to boost her energy by napping before speaking engagements.Gene Autry, “the Singing Cowboy,” routinely took naps in his dressing room between performances.President John F. Kennedy ate his lunch in bed and then settled in for a nap—every day!Oil industrialist and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller napped every afternoon in his office.Winston Churchill’s afternoon nap was a non-negotiable. He believed it helped him get twice as much done each day.President Lyndon B. Johnson took a nap every afternoon at 3:30 p.m. in order to break his day up into “two shifts.”Though criticized for it, President Ronald Reagan famously took naps as well.Source: 5 Reasons Why You Should Take a Nap Every Day — Michael HyattOn a personal note, since I started getting at least 7 to 8 hours of sleep a day, I’ve noticed a change: I became a lot more productive and got a lot more work done than when I worked 16 hours a day. Who knew sleeping was such a great tool for marketers?2. Don’t say “yes” too oftenAccording to the Pareto Principle, 20% of the effort produce 80% of the results; however, 20% of the results consumes 80% of the effort. Instead of working harder, we should focus primarily on those efforts that produce 80% of the results and forgo the rest. We will have more time to focus on the most important tasks. We should stop saying “yes” to tasks that bring low or almost no result.“The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say “no” to almost everything.” — Warren Buffet.This begs a question: what should you say “yes” and what should you say “no” to? If you can’t figure if something is going to be worth your time, consider running a simple split test. Track everything you do and optimize if it is possible.Most of us say yes more often than we should because it is so much easier than saying no. Nobody wants to be the bad guy.In a 2012 study published in the Journal of Consumer Research, researchers split 120 students in 2 groups. One group was trained to use “I can’t”, while the other was trained to use “I don’t”. The results were interesting:The students who told themselves “I can’t eat X” chose to eat the chocolate candy bar 61% of the time. Meanwhile, the students who told themselves “I don’t eat X” chose to eat the chocolate candy bars only 36% of the time. This simple change in terminology significantly improved the odds that each person would make a more healthy food choice.Next time you need to avoid saying yes, say “I don’t”.Another great trick to avoid activities that don’t add enough value into your life is the 20-second rule: give yourself 20 seconds longer for activities you shouldn’t be doing.Lower the activation energy for habits you want to adopt and raise it for habits you want to avoid. The more we can lower or even eliminate the activation energy for our desired actions, the more we enhance our ability to jump-start positive change.Source: The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work3. Stop doing everything yourself and start letting people help youAt some point in my career, I was managing a very large community and couldn’t handle it. I tried to do everything myself. I burnt out, but the community ended up taking over and managing itself. Surprisingly, members did a better job than I have ever done. I learned the power of community and why brands need user-generated content.Consumers understand what they want and how they want it better than any marketer. Did you know that, according to Octoly, user-generated videos are viewed 10 times more than brand-generated videos on YouTube? When seeking information about a particular brand, over half (51%) of Americans trust user-generated content more than the content on the brand website (16%) or media coverage on the brand (14%). It’s important for marketers to open up and seek help from the brand’s community.Source: Earned Media Rankings on YouTube — OctolyBeing a great content marketer is not about creating the best content, but building a great community that will generate high-quality content for you.It’s important for us to realize we can seek help when needed. We cannot do everything ourselves. It is better for you to let someone who can do a better job taking over some of your tasks. It will give you more time to focus on your most important tasks. Instead of wasting your time trying to figure something out yourself, let the experts help you.A lot of time, even if your friends can’t help you, having them around can help you become more productive.Just having friends nearby can push you toward productivity. “There’s a concept in ADHD treatment called the ‘body double,’ ” says David Nowell, Ph.D., a clinical neuropsychologist from Worcester, Massachusetts. “Distractable people get more done when there is someone else there, even if he isn’t coaching or assisting them.” If you’re facing a task that is dull or difficult, such as cleaning out your closets or pulling together your receipts for tax time, get a friend to be your body double.Source: Friendfluence: The Surprising Ways Friends Make Us Who We Are4. Stop being a perfectionist“We found that perfectionism trips up professors on the way to research productivity. The more perfectionistic the professor, the less productive they are,” Dr. Simon Sherry, a Dalhousie University Psychology Professor who conducted a study on perfectionism and productivity, tells University Affairs magazine. Dr. Sherry found a robust correlation between increased perfectionism and decreased productivity.Here are some problems associated with being a perfectionist:They spend more time than required on a task.They procrastinate and wait for the perfect moment. In business, if it is the perfect moment, you are too late.They miss the big picture while being too focused on small things.Marketers often wait for the perfect moment. In doing so, they end up missing it.The perfect moment is NOW.5. Stop doing repetitive tasks and start automating it.According to a research study conducted by Tethys Solutions, A team of 5 people who spent 3%, 20%, 25%, 30% and 70% of their time on repetitive tasks respectively reduced this time to 3%, 10%, 15%, 15% and 10% after 2 months of enhancing their productivity.Source: Using Automation Software To Increase Business Productivity & Competitiveness -Tethys SolutionsA week ago, I spent 15 minutes writing a basic Python program. The idea was to generate content from the data, which I pulled from Twitter API using a Ruby bot, and use Hootsuite to bulk schedule them. While it used to take me an entire day to accomplish, it now takes me less than 5 minutes. Nowadays, whenever I do something repetitively (more than 5 times), I would ask myself if I can find a program to do it for me.You don’t have to be a coder to able to automate your repetitive tasks. It’s nice to have the skills or the resources, but it’s not a requirement. If you cannot build it, buy it.People often forget that time is money. People usually do things manually because it’s easy and requires almost no research. It is manageable to moderate 30 images on Instagram for your user-generated campaign. But if you have to manage 30 000 photos and videos from 5 different platforms, you need a good digital asset management software. At Filemobile, we help people to solve that problem generate even more user-generated content. Just like managing rich media, you can easily purchase a software to solve almost all of yourproblem on the internet.If you still can’t find a solution, you can hire an expert to help you. Keep in mind that you need to spend money to make money and that time is your most valuable commodity.Tips for marketers: check out GitHub or Google app script library. Often times, you’ll find free ready-to-use open source code that requires very little programming knowledge.6. Stop guessing and start backing up your decisions with dataIf you can optimize websites for search engines, you can optimize your lives to grow and reach your maximum potential.There are so many research studies out there that can provide answers in a range of areas. For instance, did you know that most people are more easily distracted from noon to 4PM? This random statistic comes from recent research led by Robert Matchock, an associate professor of psychology at Pennsylvania State University. Even if you can’t find the data you need, it doesn’t take a lot of time to run a split test.For instance, last week we did a few tests to figure out the best way to optimize images for Twitter in-stream preview.Keep asking yourself how you’re going to measure and optimize everything you do.7. Stop working, and have do-nothing timeMost people don’t realize that we’re essentially locking ourselves in a box when we are too focused on something. It’s important to walk away from our work once in a while and have some alone time. Alone time is good for the brain and spirit, according to The power of lonely, an article in The Boston Globe.One ongoing Harvard study indicates that people form more lasting and accurate memories if they believe they’re experiencing something alone. Another indicates that a certain amount of solitude can make a person more capable of empathy towards others. And while no one would dispute that too much isolation early in life can be unhealthy, a certain amount of solitude has been shown to help teenagers improve their moods and earn good grades in school.Source: The power of lonelyIt‘s important for us to take time for reflection. We often find the solutions when we’re not searching for them.We don’t become more productive overnight. Like everything in life, it requires efforts. Change doesn’t happen if you just sit there and wait for it. It’s important for all of us to learn more about our body and find ways to optimize our energy for a more successful and happy life.Disclosure: Filemobile is a client of my agency, ThinkRenegade | eCommerce + Digital Marketing Agency.