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I recently interviewed over 200 ultra-productive people including 7 billionaires, 13 Olympians, 20+ straight-A students and over 200 successful entrepreneurs. I asked a simple, open-ended question, “What is your number one secret to productivity?” After analyzing all of their responses, I coded their answers into 15 common themes.Secret #1: They focus on minutes, not hours.Average performers default to hours and half-hour blocks on their calendar. Highly successful people know there are 1,440 minutes in every day and there is nothing more valuable than time. Money can be lost and made again, but time spent can never be reclaimed. As legendary Olympic gymnast Shannon Miller told me, “To this day, I keep a schedule that is almost minute by minute.” You must master your minutes to master your life. ACTION: You should immediately change the default setting for event duration in Google Calendar or Outlook to 15 minutes.Secret #2: They focus only on one thing.Ultra productive people know their Most Important Task (MIT) and work on it for one to two hours each morning, without interruptions. Tom Ziglar, CEO of Ziglar Inc., shared, “Invest the first part of your day working on your number one priority that will help build your business.” What task will have the biggest impact on reaching your goal? What accomplishment will get you promoted at work? ACTION: What is your #1 goal this year? What can you do TODAY to take you closer to that goal?Secret #3: They don’t use to-do lists.Throw away your to-do list; instead schedule everything on your calendar. It turns out only 41% of items on to-do lists are ever actually done. And all those undone items lead to stress and insomnia because of the Zeigarnik effect. Highly productive people put everything on their calendar and then work and live from that calendar. “Use a calendar and schedule your entire day into 15-minute blocks. It sounds like a pain, but this will set you up in the 95th percentile…”, advises the co-founder of The Art of Charm, Jordan Harbinger. ACTION: Transfer everything currently on your to-do list onto a specific day, time and duration on your calendar. Throw away old to-do list. Do a happy dance.Secret #4: They beat procrastination with time travel.Your future self can’t be trusted. That’s because we are “time inconsistent.” We buy veggies today because we think we’ll eat healthy salads all week; then we throw out green rotting mush in the future. I bought P90x because I think I’m going to start exercising vigorously and yet the box sits unopened one year later. ACTION: What can you do now to make sure your future self does the right thing? Anticipate how you will self-sabotage in the future, and come up with a solution to defeat your future self.Secret #5: They make it home for dinner.I first learned this from Intel’s Andy Grove, “There is always more to be done, more that should be done, always more than can be done.” Highly successful people know what they value in life. Yes, work, but also what else they value. There is no right answer, but for many, values include: family time, exercise, giving back. They consciously allocate their 1,440 minutes a day to each area they value (i.e., they put it on their calendar) and then they stick to the schedule. ACTION: Schedule a “Stop working and go home” event on your calendar.Secret #6: They use a notebook.Richard Branson has said on more than one occasion that he wouldn’t have been able to build Virgin without a simple notebook, which he takes with him wherever he goes. In one interview, Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis said, “Always carry a notebook. Write everything down…That is a million dollar lesson they don’t teach you in business school!” Ultra-productive people free their mind by writing everything down. ACTION: Go buy a Moleskine or similar notebook and carry it everywhere.Secret #7: They process email only a few times a day.Ultra-productive people don’t “check” email throughout the day. They don’t respond to each vibration or ding to see who has intruded their inbox. Instead, like everything else, they schedule time to process their email quickly and efficiently. For some that’s only once a day, for me, it’s morning, noon and night. ACTION: Shut off all email notifications—no dings, pop-up windows or vibrations.Secret #8: They avoid meetings at all costs.When I asked Mark Cuban to give me his best productivity advice, he quickly responded, “Never take meetings unless someone is writing a check.” Meetings are notorious time killers. They start late, have the wrong people in them, meander in their topics and run long. ACTION: You should get out of meetings whenever you can, hold fewer of them yourself, and if you do run a meeting, keep it short.Secret #9: They say “no” to almost everything.Billionaire Warren Buffet once said, “The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say ‘no’ to almost everything.” And James Altucher colorfully gave me this tip, “If something is not a “hell, YEAH! Then it’s a “no!” ACTION: Make “no” your default answer; have a good reason to say “yes”. Remember, you only have 1,440 minutes in every day. Don’t give them away easily.Secret #10: They follow the 80/20 rule.Known as the Pareto Principle, in most cases 80% of outcomes come from only 20% of activities. Ultra-productive people know which activities drive the greatest results, and focus on those and ignore the rest. ACTION: Look at last week’s calendar, which were the high value activities? How can you do more of them?Secret #11: They delegate almost everything.Ultra-productive people don’t ask, “How can I do this task?” Instead they ask, “How can this task get done?” They take the “I” out of it as much as possible. Ultra-productive people don’t have control issues and they are not micro-managers. In many cases good enough is, well, good enough. ACTION: Look at your to-do list and ask, “What can I delegate?” Use a VA or time-swap if necessary.Secret #12: They theme days of the week.Highly successful people often theme days of the week to focus on major areas. For decades I’ve used “Mondays for Meetings” and make sure I’m doing one-on-one check-ins with each direct report. My Friday afternoons are themed around financials and general administrative items that I want to clean up before the new week starts. I’ve previously written about Jack Dorsey’s work themes, which enable him to run two companies at once. Batch your work to maximize your efficiency and effectiveness. ACTION: What can you batch for next week?Secret #13: They touch things only once.How many times have you opened a piece of regular mail—a bill perhaps—and then put it down only to deal with it again later? How often do you read an email, and then close it and leave it in your inbox to deal with later? Highly successful people try to “touch it once.” If it takes less than five or ten minutes—whatever it is—they’ll deal with it right then and there. It reduces stress since it won’t be in the back of their mind, and is more efficient since they won’t have to re-read or evaluate the item again in the future. ACTION: Vow to touch it once, and stick to it.Secret #14: They practice a consistent morning routine.My single greatest surprise while interviewing over 200 highly successful people was how many of them wanted to share their morning ritual with me. Hal Elrod, author of The Miracle Morning, told me, “While most people focus on ‘doing’ more to achieve more, The Miracle Morning is about focusing on ‘becoming’ more so that you can start doing less, to achieve more.” While I heard about a wide variety of habits, most people I interviewed nurtured their body in the morning with water, a healthy breakfast and light exercise. They nurtured their mind with meditation or prayer, inspirational reading, and journaling. ACTION: Set your alarm for 5:00 AM tomorrow and move your alarm to the other side of the room. (Well you want to be ultra productive don’t you?)Secret #15: Energy is everything.You can’t make more minutes in the day, but you can increase your energy which will increase your attention, focus, decision making, and overall productivity. Highly successful people don’t skip meals, sleep or breaks in the pursuit of more, more, more. Instead, they view food as fuel, sleep as recovery, and pulse and pause with “work sprints.” ACTION: Sleep, drink, break.Tying It All TogetherYou might not be an entrepreneur, Olympian, or millionaire—or even want to be—but their secrets just might help you to get more done in less time, and help you to stop feeling so overworked and overwhelmed.For a one-page ready-to-print infographic on these 15 Secrets click here.

Well, yes, sort of …Remember the scandal a few years ago about Toyotas suddenly accelerating all by themselves? Toyota investigated it and said it was simply not true and those that claimed it was so were lying. After a 2 yr investigation, the NHTSA agreed. Subsequent investigations found that there may have been some of the many accidents that were, in fact, Toyota’s fault.In the course of the investigation and some of the lawsuits that followed, Toyota let it leak out that they had an onboard computer that records and stores all kinds of data about what the car and driver are doing. It acts like a “black box” on an aircraft. They tried hard to downplay the tracking aspects of this device and tried to imply it was used only for maintenance. However, it was entered into evidence as proof that most of the cars had not suddenly and on their own accelerated. This recording device also records the pedal positions and they showed that the owners had actually pushed the gas pedal - by accident or on purpose. Toyota was not found guilty or held liable for most of the crashes.In subsequent reports and news stories, it came out that most Japanese and German and a few American cars all have these systems. It uses the data collected by the OBD sensors and adds a few more, along with a clock and calendar and memory. It is, indeed, used for maintenance and also for confirmation that you have or have not violated your warranty.Data like these are increasingly being sought by insurance companies when there are high liability claims being made.A design that was tested in Japan added a BlueTooth module to this OBD/black box device. It was marketed as being able to communicate with your tablet or smartphone to give you detailed data about your car’s performance. It was, however, also used by police to read what a driver has been doing in the recent past as far as speed, sudden stops, and sudden accelerations. The police liked it and lots of car people liked getting access to the OBD data. It is not widely advertised as to whether these devices are on models sold in the US.Adding a GPS module to this device is a very simple and cheap add-on and may have already been done. Using wifi, RFID technology or some other longer-range broadcast (like GSM) of this data would allow police or insurance companies to record the data from passing cars along the highway. When the data shows any violations, it could flag the car for a stop by police or a rise in insurance rates.In the US, it is illegal to force someone to testify against themselves (self-incrimination). That is why the “no comment” response is allowed from witnesses. Using a device in your own car to give evidence that you have broken a law falls under this self-incrimination limitation. This is similar to the limitations placed on police access to your cell phone. In most states, it takes a court order or warrant for the police to use cell phone data without the owner’s permission.However, our legal system is filled with holes and ways to bypass the laws. “Contempt of Court” and “Probable cause” can be used to force witnesses to testify under threat of going to jail. Using “the greater good” or “public safety” is often used to justify using evidence from you that you do not consent to be used such as fingerprints, blood samples, your cell phone and DNA. It is a small step to access this car tracking data for “public safety”.It can be expected that as soon as the various manufacturers agree on some standard for the data formats, device communications and reader devices, these OBD/GPS/black box devices will be in every car, monitoring your every move and reporting it all to the police and to insurance companies. I expect this within the next five years…that is, if it is not already being used.UPDATE:A lot of comments have been made about this black box technology having been around for a long time. What is confusing is that in 1996-1997, all US cars sold in the US were mandated to use a maintenance device called OBD. It was later upgraded to OBD-II which is now standard on all cars. This is strictly a maintenance sensor system that records the status of dozens of sensors all over the car. It is a diagnostic device that every repair shop uses. Some carmakers have enhanced their OBD. It is a natural for adding additional sensors and processing power and would be the central component in a “black box”.However, a black box is different. The objective of the black box is NOT maintenance but to record what the driver and car are doing with the focus of providing evidence in case of an accident - exactly the same objective as a black box on an aircraft. Stuff like pedal positions, gear, the status of brakes/ABS, etc. There are some overlap with the OBD but also a lot of extras. The pure black-box functions are NOT a part of every car and not a part of the OBD. For some nuances in the law, a black box is not legal unless the owner/driver agrees to have it installed. There are also some laws on how and if it can be used.Yes, there are black boxes installed by insurance companies. These recording systems are installed only if you allow them to do so. They add the black box functions to the OBD and then record it and send it to the insurance company. If you drive totally within the law, this will give you an insurance premium discount but by and large, it is not a good thing. It records going over the speed limit by even 1 MPH, it records rolling stops and turns without turn signals, etc. All these violations are used by the insurance company to increase your rates or as an excuse to cancel your policy if you make a claim. If you are a “perfect” driver, then it is a good deal but it is remarkably difficult to NEVER break ANY law while driving.UPDATE 2:I did accident investigations while I was a cop and the amount of data and its implications that can be gathered from a black box is amazing. For instance - from time of beginning to brake to the time of coming to a full stop relates to how much you are paying attention, how fast you were going and the condition of your car. Measuring the “G” force during that time says how late you begin braking. Lots of fast and high “G” stops says you are driving too fast and waiting too long before braking. Light sensors can tell when you turn on your headlights, if you use turn signals and if you are “brake checking” people. The “G” sensor can also detect how fast you accelerate, how fast you take turns and if you are drifting around turns. What gear you are in and the engine RPM can be used to calculate exactly what your speed is at any given instance so they know if you are speeding prior to hard braking. On cars with antiskid sensors, they can also combine speed, gear, braking and other data to determine if you are driving too fast for conditions even if it is below the speed limit. This can also be used to estimate your tire traction, whether you are skidding or slipping on the road and if you have locked up your brakes. The rate of changes in steering wheel adjustments can indicate if you are drunk or drowsy. Virtually every aspect of your driving can be computed and proven by these black box sensors.When I was a cop, we had to get all this kind of data from taking measurements of skid marks, tire tread, and impact damage. The idea of a cop using a remote reader to ask your car if you have violated the law or if you caused an accident is probably in our not-to-distant future.

For my last book I interviewed over 200 successful entrepreneurs and I asked a simple, open-ended question, “What is your number one secret to productivity?” After analyzing all of their responses, I found 15 unique themes.SECRET #1: They focus on minutes, not hours.Average performers default to hours and half-hour blocks on their calendar. Highly successful people know where are 1,440 minutes in every day and there is nothing more valuable than time. Money can be lost and made again, but time spent can never be reclaimed. As legendary Olympic gymnast Shannon Miller told me, “To this day, I keep a schedule that is almost minute by minute.” You must master your minutes to master your life.SECRET #2: They focus only on one thing.Ultra productive people know their Most Important Task (MIT) and work on it for one to two hours each morning, without interruptions. Tom Ziglar, CEO of Ziglar Inc., shared, “Invest the first part of your day working on your number one priority that will help build your business.” What task will have the biggest impact on reaching your goal? What accomplishment will get you promoted at work?SECRET #3: They don’t use to-do lists.Throw away your to-do list; instead schedule everything on your calendar. It turns out only 41% of items on to-do lists are ever actually done. And all those undone items lead to stress and insomnia because of the Zeigarnik effect. Highly productive people put everything on their calendar and then work and live from that calendar. “Use a calendar and schedule your entire day into 15-minute blocks. It sounds like a pain, but this will set you up in the 95th percentile…”, advises the co-founder of The Art of Charm, Jordan Harbinger.SECRET #4: They beat procrastination with time travel.Your future self can’t be trusted. That’s because we are “time inconsistent”. We buy veggies today because we think we’ll eat healthy salads all week; then we throw out green rotting mush in the future. I bought P90x because I think I’m going to start exercising vigorously and yet the box sits unopened one year later. What can you do now to make sure your future self does the right thing? Anticipate how you will self-sabotage in the future, and come up with a solution to defeat your future self.SECRET #5: They make it home for dinner.I first learned this from Intel’s Andy Grove, “There is always more to be done, more that should be done, always more than can be done.” Highly successful people know what they value in life. Yes, work, but also what else they value. There is no right answer, but for many, values include: family time, exercise, giving back. They consciously allocate their 1440 minutes a day to each area they value (i.e., they put it on their calendar) and then they stick to the schedule.SECRET #6: They use a notebook.Richard Branson has said on more than one occasion that he wouldn’t have been able to build Virgin without a simple notebook, which he takes with him wherever he goes. In one interview, Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis said, “Always carry a notebook. Write everything down…That is a million dollar lesson they don’t teach you in business school!” Ultra-productive people free their mind by writing everything down.SECRET #7: They process email only a few times a day.Ultra-productive people don’t “check” email throughout the day. They don’t respond to each vibration or ding to see who has intruded into their inbox. Instead, like everything else, they schedule time to process their email quickly and efficiently. For some that’s only once a day, for me, it’s morning, noon and night. I specifically call it my 321Zero system to get to inbox zero.SECRET #8: They avoid meetings at all costs.When I asked Mark Cuban to give me his best productivity advice, he quickly responded, “Never take meetings unless someone is writing a check.” Meetings are notorious time killers. They start late, have the wrong people in them, meander in their topics and run long. You should get out of meetings whenever you can, hold fewer of them yourself, and if you do run a meeting, keep it short.SECRET #9: They say “no” to almost everything.Billionaire Warren Buffet once said, “The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say 'no' to almost everything.” And James Altucher colorfully gave me this tip, “If something is not a “hell, YEAH! Then it’s a “no!” Remember, you only have 1440 minutes in every day. Don’t give them away easily.SECRET #10: They follow the 80/20 rule.Known as the Pareto Principle, in most cases 80% of outcomes come from only 20% of activities. Ultra-productive people know which activities drive the greatest results, and focus on those and ignore the rest.SECRET #11: They delegate almost everything.Ultra-productive people don’t ask, “How can I do this task?” Instead they ask, “How can this task get done.” They take the “I” out of it as much as possible. Ultra-productive people don’t have control issues and they are not micro-managers. In many cases good enough is, well, good enough.SECRET #12: They theme days of the week.Highly successful people often theme days of the week to focus on major areas. For decades I’ve used “Mondays for Meetings” and make sure I’m doing one-on-one check-ins with each direct report. My Friday afternoons are themed around financials and general administrative items that I want to clean up before the new week starts. I’ve previously written about Jack Dorsey’s work themes, which enable him to run two companies at once. Batch your work to maximize your efficiency and effectiveness.SECRET #13: They touch things only once.How many times have you opened a piece of regular mail—a bill perhaps—and then put it down only to deal with it again later? How often do you read an email, and then close it and leave it in your inbox to deal with later? Highly successful people try to “touch it once.” If it takes less than five or ten minutes—whatever it is—they’ll deal with it right then and there. Reduces stress since it won’t be in the back of their mind, and is more efficient since they won’t have to re-read or evaluate the item again in the future.SECRET #14: They practice a consistent morning routine.My single greatest surprise while interviewing over 200 highly successful people was how many of them wanted to share their morning ritual with me. Hal Elrod, author of The Miracle Morning, told me, “While most people focus on ‘doing’ more to achieve more, The Miracle Morning is about focusing on ‘becoming’ more so that you can start doing less, to achieve more.” While I heard about a wide variety of habits, most people I interviewed nurtured their body in the morning with water, a healthy breakfast and light exercise. They nurtured their mind with meditation or prayer, inspirational reading, and journaling.SECRET #15: Energy is everything.You can’t make more minutes in the day, but you can increase your energy which will increase your attention, focus, decision making, and overall productivity. Highly successful people don’t skip meals, sleep or breaks in the pursuit of more, more, more. Instead, they view food as fuel, sleep as recovery, and pulse and pause with “work sprints”.Since releasing the book I’ve gotten emails from readers every day telling me how their life has changed. The ideas that seem to have the biggest impact—not necessarily the easiest to adopt—is having a daily MIT, scheduling time for your MIT in the morning, and throwing out your to-do list and living from your calendar instead.Download the ready-to-print “Infographic: 15 Things Ultra Productive People Do Differently.”