100 productivity tricks they will never teach you in university

14 min readApr 1, 2019

Stop acting like a slave

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Since I launched my business in 2011, I always dreamed to live the 4 hours workweek lifestyle. Reading this book lead me to an unstoppable craving for knowledge and skills to master this lifestyle. Year after year since I’ve been reading books and practicing the art of productivity to get closer to this ideology.

As you probably know by now, the school system is outdated. It will never teach you how to work in the modern age, be efficient and live a healthy balanced life away from mental illness.

We have 7 wellness life dimensions. When you are not balanced in those 7 wellness life dimensions, no matter how hard you work, you’ll always end up stuck into a crazy 8 loop, over and over again. Rate the following on a scale of 1 (lowest) to 10 (highest) without using the number 7 (ok zone, good enough standard). And then tackle one productivity habit in the dimension you would like to improve in the next 90 days. Chase one rabbit at a time using the Kaizen principle for 66 days straight.

PERSONAL {give back/help/social/community} Note: _______
JOB {daily work, skills, position, domain} Note: _______
BUSINESS {colleagues/organization/clients/industry} Note: _______
RELATIONSHIP {family/core friends/spouse/kids} Note: _______
PHYSICAL {body/health/mental/stress} Note: _______
FINANCE {cash flow/savings/debt/expenses/lifestyle} Note: _______
SPIRITUAL {inner-self/love/mindfulness/gratitude} Note: _______

Personal

Self-Development Journal: Journal everyday analyzing your thought process, introspecting your behaviors and emotions, doing exercises, taking notes on what you’ve learned, listing gratitudes and affirmations. Book: 4 hours work week / Tim Ferriss
Stack Dominos: Goal set Someday, then 10 years, 5 years and 3 years and bring it back to year goal, quarter goal, month goal, week goal, and day goal.
Morning Routine: Prime your brain toward getting into a momentum, put happy vibe music on, drink cold water, do a 2-minute long workout yoga or stretching to activate your brain’s reactive system, do a 5-minute journal affirmation, do positive statements of love and gratitude, 20 minutes bodyweight, take a cold shower, drink some cold-pressed green juice and eat fruits.
The 1st 10 Minutes of your day: This is a crucial moment when your brain is functioning with the highest amount of brain waves. Everything you hear, think or see will imprint onto your spirit for the rest of your day. Tune in to the right state of mind in the first 10 minutes of your day with mental positive affirmation and a gratitude statement.
Sleep: You need 7h30–8h a night to get 5 hours of REM Sleep. Try some earplugs, eye cover, and a warm and fluffy blanket. Book: The sleep revolution / Arianna Huffington
Control your sleep thieves: Don’t drink coffee before 12h00, don’t eat dinner after 8h30pm, don’t use your mind as a memory device, don’t watch porn or drama movie/series, don’t look at a screen 30 minutes before sleep, etc.
Night Routine: The goal is to empty your mind and relax your body. Don’t eat and check your phone after 21h00, don’t plan & set goals for tomorrow after 19h, and don’t eat heavy food for dinner on weekdays, or take a hot shower and drink cold water after, and try Journaling 5 minutes about a positive thing that happened that day, do 10 minutes of sleep meditation lying in the bed while doing muscle contractions
Bed Time: Go to bed between 8–10 pm, around 2h after the sun goes down. Our body is connected with the energy of the sun.
Life-Changing Habits: Build one life-changing habit at a time for 66 days using the Kaizen principle. We can only build 5 life-changing habits a year. If you chase 2 rabbits at the time you’ll catch neither of them.
Trigger behaviors: Set alarms with triggers to act on habits or things you want to improve and then link it to a reward to build the habit loop.
Photo Accountability: Use Google Photo to track your daily habits, workout, diet, social life, etc.
Stay settle a minimum: 60–90 days in 1 destination with your steady Airbnb and coworking place in the neighborhood. 20+ minutes of commuting to work can lead to depression.
Dopamine: Maximize your energy by consuming less dopamine like notifications, drugs, sex, etc.
NOFAP: No porn, no Tinder, no Instagram. It creates problems with your neurotransmitter because too much dopamine is being released.
Announce your Goal publicly: Write on social media, make a video of what you’ll do too. Send it to your friends and post it on all social media sites you subscribe to.
Unconscious addictions: Remove them 1 by 1. Things that you do too much without realizing it steal your time for the other 7 wellness life dimensions. Ex: burying yourself too much in books.
Affirmation/Self-Talk: We have a constant conversation running all the time (the Monkey Mind). We have 50k-70k thoughts a day, of which 80% are negative. You need to control all micro negative self-talk and turn them into positive ones.
Learn 60 minutes every day: 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes at night or while commuting. Find your golden nugget of the day and write it down in your journal.
Don’t commute more than 20 minutes: Studies show that people who commute or drive more than 20 minutes to go to work are more depressed.
Consistency: 5 minutes a day is better than 30 minutes 3 times a week. This is according to the Kaizen principle.
How are you living?: You won an ultra-lottery of being alive, 1 chance out of 400 trillion was winning the lottery is 1 out of 14 million and getting struck by lightning is 1 out of 10 million, and being killed in a plane crash is 1 out of 11 million
Visualization: Create yourself a pocket dream book or board where you hang in your room with images, goals, quotes, models of inspiration, and the things you want.
Your face muscles: Tense forehead muscles with crusty eyes will lead to more stress and less peace. Make sure you are always smiling from the inside with your lips slightly inclined up to attract positive people.
Your environment: Your flatmate or house companion is affecting your vibrations. The city or island you live in, and the weather and how comfortable you are also affecting your state of mind.

Job

Willpower: It’s like a phone battery, start the day at 100%. Be aware, manage it and recharge it smartly. These things drain your willpower: Implementing new behavior, filtering distractions, resisting temptation, suppressing emotions, restraining aggression, suppressing impulses, taking tests, trying to impress others, coping with fear, doing something you don’t like to do, selecting long-term over short-term results, etc. Book: The willpower Instinct / Kelly McGonigal
Your ONE THING: Every morning for 3–4 hours work on your one thing that will lead you to extraordinary results. Everything else is a distraction and drains your willpower. Be a maker in the morning; a manager in the afternoon. Book: The One Thing / Gary Kelly
Work from home: Work from home in the 3 hours you woke up to EAT THAT FROG. Book Eat That Frog / Brian Tracy
Physical Workplace: Empty and clean your desk, and have a strong back cover. Work with a wall in front of you so you won’t be distracted by people passing by. Every 3 minutes workers get distracted and it takes 11 minutes to get back in focus. Book: Getting things done / David Allen
Wi-Fi & Desk: Chase 20mbps or more Wi-Fi. A good workplace, carry a pocket Wi-Fi, get an unlimited sim card. Work from a steady desk with a chair with a good back cover.
The 80/20 Pareto Law: It states that roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. Analyze every detail of your life and work with it to focus on what matters.
Pomodoro Technique: Do a minimum of 8 blocks of 25 minutes per day. Your brain can only work with a focus of 90 minutes at the time with a peak of concentration at 45 minutes.
Multitasking: Never ever multitask, it’s the most toxic thing for your productivity. You lose 20% of your time in a day. Having 2 windows open on your computer at the same is a form of multitasking
Track everything: Track your work with Toggl/Desktime/Hubstaff and do your finances weekly with Mint, and go over your goals with an accountability partner.
Flow/Deep Work: Your ideal massive goal is to train yourself to go into flow/deep work every day. Book: Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World / Cal Newport; FLOW: The Psychology of optimal experience / Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
432hz music: Listen to it while working or going to sleep (classic, guitar, instrumental, movie trailer). If you are working and listening to music with lyrics, you are multitasking because your subconscious tries to process those words even if you don’t understand the language.
Emails are toxic: Master the email game to do email 3h/week. Filtering, labeling, using 2 addresses, autoresponder and don’t show the email Google Chrome extension and block site extensions in the morning and at night.
Accountability Partner: Find an accountability partner or Coach and log in daily and track your evolution. HabitBull mobile app.
Motivation is garbage: Trick your brain to act within the 5-seconds rule. Tedtalk: How to stop screwing yourself over | Mel Robbins
Be Agile: Constantly analyze your time at hand with your resources and willpower level to see if a 5 minutes specific task could be done
Success brings more success: Reach the momentum principle of success
Finish it Now: Finish the task at hand now to not lose 500% of your time
Tomorrow Goal Planning: Plan tomorrow today before quitting work. It’s only 10 minutes of your work session.
Give up perfection: Launch publicly at 80% done, put your ego aside and ask for feedback from your targeted audience.
No watch day: Battle manic-depression with worry breaks with no watch
Worries are an illusion: Worries = stress = burnout = depression = hard to do anything productive
Your #1 professional skill: Master and improve it constantly. This is what you are paid for. This is when you work with it you bring the greatest value to your organization. The average CEO works 28 minutes a day on it. The Compound Effect / Darren Hardy
You're being paid to rest: Maximize sleep and off times, playtime, hobbies, social life, and stabilize your 7 wellness life dimensions. Don’t work to go on vacation, live on vacation and take breaks going to work. Plan your vacation calendar for the next 12 months with 2 months’ of work sessions in between.
Improve 1 skill at a time: There’s too much knowledge and information out there. Every 4 months focus on 1 skill by learning and acting on the top books, Ted talks, podcasts, and YouTube tutorials.
Emergency Channel: Set up one that only a vital few know about. Use different chat apps with notifications that you use with those rare people.

Business

Start with Why: List 20 reasons why you will never give up. Book/Ted Talk: Start With Why / Simon Sinek
Leaders eat last: Let other people express their opinion first, it will help their sense of involvement without affecting their perspective and allow you to have the perspective of everyone before you express your opinion. Book/Ted Talk: Leaders eat last / Simon Sinek
Voice vs Typing: Send voice messages (220 words/minute) instead of writing (70 words/minute). 80% of the web will be audio and video by 2020, now 30% of Google searches are made by voice.
Record Screencast: Make a mini video training recording your screen while talking to show exactly one thing to get done right instead of planning a meeting for it. Use the Loom extension.
Hire slowly and fire quickly: You are better finding someone fitting your values and your company’s culture than one having the best CV. Enthusiasm and commitment are better than skills. A badly managed employee will end up costing you 4 times his salary over a period of 12 months.
Written/Text Message: Never ever bring up concerns via text message. Message only to give respect to humans.
Set up all expectations: For all coworkers, clients, suppliers with clear announcement automation.

Physical

Drink Water: Get water and prepare to not have to break your flow, at least 2 liters per day of filtered water. Don’t trust the corporation selling you bad water. Carry your water in a blue bottle with a crystal at the bottom.
Exercise: 20 minutes minimum daily to re-oxygenate your mind.
What the health: Eat on your own self-aware terms. Food is your carburetor. If after eating you don’t feel more energized, you didn’t eat real food or you ate too much. Eat for 20 minutes and until you feel you are 80% full.
Stress/Fears/Doubt free: Stress is the biggest killer of dreams. When you are stressed you can’t think, you can’t work, and you can’t have energy.
Fasting: Water fasting for 3 days for 2–3 times a year can give you 20 years of longevity. Read in-depth about it, and make sure to break your fast properly.
Coffee Enema: All diseases come from the gut. Clean your colon with the German technique recommended by the cancer research institute.
Not eating badly treated animals: When you eat dead animals that were badly beaten up and raised with no care, you eat their attitude, stress, and suffering. Stop eating any kind of meat for 10 days then eat it for only a day and you’ll see the devastating realization on your thought patterns.
Regulate legal drugs: Salt, Refined Sugar, Caffeine, Alcohol, Nicotine. All those should be consumed as less as possible to keep a balanced mind.

Finance

5% love account: Collect a little bit weekly and always give it in-person quarterly to an initiative that you really care about. And you need to see in person the people benefiting from it. Book: Give and Take / Adam Grant
Pay yourself first: Pay yourself 10% of your monthly income before all other monthly bills. Put the 10% pay in an investment account. Book: Richest man in Babylon / George Clason
Outsourcing: Outsource all your handy tasks in the Philippines, India, Eastern Europe, Colombia, and Venezuela
Personal Assistant: Use one to buy, search, book, schedule, remind, and contact. Upwork.com
Weekly Finance Report: Take 30 minutes to analyze and give feedback each Sunday. MINT App
Invest your savings: Every quarter or semester invest your $5,000 and pay yourself first by putting your savings into a project linked to your resources

Relationship

Find Mentors: Seek advice from people who have achieved 10% more than you did
Masterminds: Gather 2–3 friends into a weekly 1-hour Mastermind to build on things you have learned and support each other
Build your community: It’s the most fulfilling way to satisfy your social life and the best way to start a business.
Become a massive LOVER: Hug everyone you care about with your head on the right side to have a heart to heart connection.
Say no gracefully: When you know where you are going, it is easy to see what can help you get to your destination or not. From that point, you’ll hardly have to say no to very many opportunities.
Everyone is insecure: At every level, people don’t know what they are doing. Everyone is trying to figure it out. So don’t care about what other people think.
Praising Someone: Send out 3–4 minutes personal video messages praising someone for their support or work and it will give you a massive energy burst.
Your top 5: The person you’ll be in 5 years is based on the 5 people you hang out with the most and the books you read today. Make a life audit to pass more time with your top 5.

Spiritual

Minimalist Lifestyle: Stop worrying for stuff to free up your mind’s bandwidth
Meditate Daily: To control your mind’s wandering and processing negative thoughts
7 wellness life dimensions: Satisfy your 7 dimensions one at a time choosing the one that can affect the other at the same time. These are Finance, Spiritual, Personal, Job, Business, Relationship, and Physical
Power of Now: It’s the only thing that is real. Books: The Power of Now / Eckhart Tolle; The Compass of Now / DDnard, Be here now / Ram Dass
Be a teacher: Teaching is the end of the circle of learning. There’s always someone in your entourage to inspire, mentor, and support mentally
Find your temple: The gym, meditation room, library/bookstore. We all need these places to go evacuate our worries and doubts when things get dark
100% responsible: We are the problem and the solution all at the same time
Creative procrastination: There’s always one thing we love that we do too much.
We are all procrastinators: Know when to stop it, and break the cycle. Set a daily due date. Tedtalk: Inside the mind of a master procrastinator | Tim Urban
True Wealth: Don’t chase recognition, trophies, money or fame. Real success is about how many people I was able to serve today, and how many I’ve impacted. Start small with your sister/brother, and parents. It will make you fly.
Don’t be a copycat: Take a bit of what you like from everybody.
Listen mindfully: Humans can talk on average 220 words a minute but can process only 550 a minute, and that’s why your mind wanders when you listen to someone or listen with the intent of responding. Listening mindfully creates deep human connections.
Control your decisions: Disable all notifications, and put AdBlocker on your laptop and Browser AdBlock on your phone, download music on your phone instead of YouTube or Spotify with ads. The goal is to find ways that you hear about them 8 times. Show your phone who is the boss of your life.
Write everything down on paper: Cognitive reaction and it frees up your mind. You want to do everything you can to not use your mind as a memory device.
Self-talks: Control your self-talk so as to be constantly optimistic and positive. Micro negative self-talk is a soul killer.
Change your words, Change your life: Stop saying I don’t have time, or I am too busy. Make the time. We always have time to do what we like. Stop saying I can’t afford that, and make a plan on to afford it.
Your major key constraints: Empty your bag of rocks. What is holding you back? What past wounds are you still carrying in your day to day life?
Weapons of Mass Distraction: Remove the temptation and track your behavior using Block App, Rescue Time, News Feed Eradicator, and Plane Mode.
Clean up virtual space: Google Drive, Favoris, hard drive, and Social Accounts, to free up your mind and feel lighter.
Deconstruct your ego: Ego is your enemy / Ryan Holiday if it is too big it will lead you to a dangerous path that will always backfire on you. Live an immersive spiritual experience of more than 10 days to start the deconstruction.
Access the spiritual dimension: An Ayahuasca retreat or smoking DMT will lead you to comprehend your deepest demons, your most oppressive thoughts, the spiritual dimension and even experience death.
The Dharma lifestyle: Make 10 days vipassana silence meditation retreat to learn this unique 2,500-year-old technique to access the universe inside you.