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Tag Archive for: #productiveleaders

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#Leadership : How to Rewire Your Brain for Serious #Productivity …If your Meetings are Sputtering, Rewiring the Gray Matter May Help Get Employees Reconnected.

March 4, 2016/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

The co-founders of Aditazz, which uses software to design and construct hospitals and other specialized buildings, were beyond frustrated. Zigmund Rubel, an architect, wanted to design buildings in one direction, either from the outside in or from the inside out, depending on the project. Deepak Aatresh, the CEO and an electrical and computer science engineer, was interested in simultaneous outside-in, inside-out design aided by computation.Free- Big Photo Lense

It was one of many seemingly irresolvable conflicts. “We knew we were well-intentioned, very smart, accomplished people, but it was hard to make forward progress,” Aatresh says.

This type of clash is familiar to neuroscience expert Ajit Singh, a partner at VC Artiman Ventures and member of the Aditazz board of directors; it has its roots in the brain. Innovation comes from com­bining disciplines, but people in different disciplines don’t think the same way. The idea that the right brain hemisphere controls creativity and the left logic has been debunked. But research shows that the left brain is more responsible for language, whereas the right takes care of spatial processing and attention. “People don’t select professions,” Singh explains. “Professions select people.”

These differences were interfering with decision making. Aatresh would schedule one-hour meetings for the startup team to make major decisions, but the conversation would go off-track. An hour would pass and little was accomplished. When he asked Singh how long decision making should take, the answer was: “I don’t know. Let’s let it go.” The solution was to create a lounge area with comfortable seating where people could sit as a group. Meetings began at 6 p.m., included wine and snacks, and had no planned end time. Some went as late as 1 a.m. But Aditazz’s best innovations came out of these sessions.

You may not want all-nighters, but Aditazz’s approach is broadly applicable. It works by creating a setting in which employees feel safe and open to collaboration. Making your people feel safe is key, because without that, “we go into protect behavior,” says Judith E. Glaser, author of Conversational Intelligence: How Great Leaders Build Trust and Get Extraordinary Results. “The amygdala takes over. The prefrontal cortex gets shut down.” The amygdala is linked to fear responses and pleasure. The prefrontal cortex enables empathy, intuition, higher-level social skills, and three-dimensional thinking, Glaser says. “It allows a level of innovation that’s off the charts in a way people have trouble explaining.”

“The idea that the right brain controls creativity and the left logic has been debunked.”

Glaser begins meetings by asking those present to describe what success looks like. When someone hears that others share his or her goals, it stimulates the rostromedial prefrontal cortex, which governs social decisions. “It says, ‘Let’s be friends. I’m more like you than you think,'” she explains. Singh made Rubel and Aatresh start meetings by telling each other that they understand their thought processes are different. “It sounds like kindergarten,” Singh says. “But over time, I saw there was a lot moreempathy.”

 

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That empathy led Aatresh to change his behavior. “Engineers love to go to the whiteboard,” he says. “I realized that’s intimidating to the intuitive people, because they know you’re going to force their thinking into those boxes.”

Now he sometimes ditches the whiteboard and wanders the room. Invariably, the architects are doodling while the engineers take notes. “For years, I believed people who doodled in meetings were time wasters,” he says. “Now I see there’s a connection between drawing on a sheet of paper and drawing one’s thoughts out.”

Neuro Lessons

Here are three places to reprogram for better performance.

1. Beware the Nonconscious

“People communicate powerful cues by body language. We process these cues nonconsciously, in a fifth of a second,” says Dr. Evian Gordon, CEO ofMyBrainSolutions.com. When we feel threatened, our nonconscious mode can assert itself. If someone says, “But I’m concerned” and crosses her arms, she can nonconsciously give a cue meaning she is switching off.

2. Mind Over Matter

Prime yourself for success by elevating your mood before a speech or meeting–for instance, with 20 minutes of moderate exercise, suggests Josh Davis, director of research at the NeuroLeadership Institute in New York City, and author of Two Awesome Hours: Science-Based Strategies to Harness Your Best Time and Get Your Most Important Work Done. When stressed, try picturing something calming, such as a flower or landscape.

3. Make People Comfortable

New Jersey-based Pirch, a retailer of luxury appliances, uses neuroscience to create spaces where people feel safe and can enjoy themselves, says co-founder Jim Stuart: “We rationalize our choice of one store or another, but what really happens is that the nonconscious limbic brain hijacks your cerebral cortex. For the nonconscious brain, the priority is avoiding risk and seeking rewards.”

Inside the Mind of the Entrepreneur

Born entrepreneur? New research shows that some people are wired that way.

Greater Mental Flexibility

According to Heidi Hanna, author of The Sharp Solution: A Brain-Based Approach for Optimal Performance, entrepreneurs excel at switching tasks quickly: “It may be from taking on too much at once or that multitasking is more important for their success.”

Higher Perceived Stress

“Most successful entrepreneurs say they have high levels of stress but thrive on it,” Hanna says. In their next phase of research, her team will look at biological markers to see whether stress is harming entrepreneurs or not.

Positively Above Average

A positivity bias is the nonconscious presumption that you are safe, whereas someone with a negativity bias sees threats everywhere. On a negative-to-positive scale of 1 to 10, the average person scores a 5.5, but entrepreneurs hit an average of 6.5.

Accurate and Agile

Entrepreneurs have above-average motor coordination. At first Hanna thought this was insignificant, but then she realized it might be linked to a key trait. “As I talked to entrepreneurs about what makes them different, they said they make quick decisions. If one turns out wrong, they’re confident they’ll be able to make it right.”

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The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.
FROM THE MARCH 2016 ISSUE OF INC. MAGAZINE
https://www.firstsun.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/logo-min-300x123.jpg 0 0 First Sun Team https://www.firstsun.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/logo-min-300x123.jpg First Sun Team2016-03-04 16:37:112020-09-30 20:53:44#Leadership : How to Rewire Your Brain for Serious #Productivity …If your Meetings are Sputtering, Rewiring the Gray Matter May Help Get Employees Reconnected.

#Leadership : 15 Surprising Things Productive People Do Differently…Interview of over 200 Ultra-Productive People & Simply asked an Open-Question: “What is your Number One Secret to Productivity?”

January 21, 2016/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

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 unique ideas.

Free- Door to Building

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.

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 ofZiglar 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.

 

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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 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.

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. 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.

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”.

Tying It All Together

You 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.

–

Kevin Kruse is the author of the bestselling book 15 Secrets Successful People Know About Time Management and the free online “How Millionaires Schedule Their Day: A 1-Page Planning Tool.”

 

Forbes.com |  January 20, 2016 | Kevin Kruse

https://www.firstsun.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/logo-min-300x123.jpg 0 0 First Sun Team https://www.firstsun.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/logo-min-300x123.jpg First Sun Team2016-01-21 15:09:162020-09-30 20:54:09#Leadership : 15 Surprising Things Productive People Do Differently…Interview of over 200 Ultra-Productive People & Simply asked an Open-Question: “What is your Number One Secret to Productivity?”

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