Below are my notes on Darren Hardy's seminar called Insane Productivity. Darren Hardy is really a speaker, author and publisher of Success Magazine. This presentation was given at a Trans America conference.
In the 1930's Andrew Carnage commissioned Napoleon Hill to interview people like Henry Ford, Charles Schwab, King Gillette, Woodrow Wilson, William Taft, Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, William Wrigley, John D Rockefeller, and Harvey Firestone. Hill became the publisher of Success magazine. In 2007 Darren Hardy became the publisher of Success and got to interview people like Richard Branson, Donald Trump, Tony Hawk, Steve Jobs, Harrison Ford, Warren Buffet and Bill Gates. You will find 4 categories of people in the event that you made 4 boxes with the vertical axis being Results and the Horizontal being Time and Effort you'd get: Low Results-Low Effort that's the Unengaged, Low Results-High Effort may be the Over Motivated Underachiever, High Results-High Effort may be the Over Whelmed Overachiever and High Results-Low Effort may be the Super Achiever. Distractions are what's in how to be a Super Achiever. Especially in modern times the top thing you have to know is to manage your attention. We must have the ability to scale our skills at exactly the same rate that we are scaling progress inside our society. We must learn to weed out unneeded solicitations on our time. It's not what Super Achiever's do that makes them successful. It is what they don't do. You have to perfect saying “no”. Warren Buffet is quoted as saying, “For each and every 100 great opportunities which are brought if you ask me, I say no 99 times”. Steve Jobs said, “Deciding what not to complete is as important as deciding what to do”. It doesn't help to complete something efficiently that we should not have been doing at all. We must be great at two things as opposed to average at many. We must “give up” on certain things to produce room for time for you to be great at a few things. Some items on Hardy's “give up” list were television, news, watching sports, music, body building, and mechanics. Take that time for you to master the skills you want. You will find vital few functions, vital few priorities go now, vital few metrics and vital few improvements. The vital few functions are those issues that matter the most for the career. There could be activities that have plenty of steps but just a few of the steps are vital that want your specific great skill. Leave the others to the team to complete. Concentrate on the things that make the money. In real estate he focused on prospecting and negotiating the sale though there are lots of steps which are needed within the process. Determine what your 3 vital functions are and spend 90% of your time on that and either delegate or discontinue the rest. What is the one activity that you do well that many impacts your success. A function is an activity that you have do. A priority are the over-arching goal. Concentrate on a maximum of 3 strategic priorities. We are distracted once every 3 minutes but it requires us 11 minutes to get back to circumstances of concentration. There's no true multi-tasking. That which you are actually doing is switching back and forth from multiple tasks. It has actually be shown to decrease your intelligence. Don't mistake activity for productivity. You can't be Concentra tingly productive for more than 90 minutes at a time. You have to isolate yourself from distractions, you need to employ a countdown clock and then you have to recover. The vital metrics are the 3 goals you need to achieve to perform your objective. Only give attention to those 3 goals. What're the 2 or 3 things needed to perform those goals? Then track those tasks on a regular basis. We must set our “Personal Development Set Point” higher. This is our standard for things like health, money, and relationships. For things to alter and improve you must change and improve. Learn less and study more. What is your #1 goal and what's the #1 skill necessary to reach that goal? Once a fraction he focuses on that skill by reading 5 books, playing 3 CDs or DVDs and attending 1 seminar. Every morning he reads for 30 minutes and while his driving, walking or exercising he listens to audiobooks for 30 minutes. Of each dollar your apply 10% to help others and 10% to help yourself. You have to neglect to succeed. You can't be afraid of failure. Note, I'm unsure what the next “5” is in the formula.
Hardy is a great speaker. He provides you with the data he promises. Many speakers just offer you one teaser after another to stop you listening but there is never any payoff. Hardy provides you with the data he promises in a reasonable manner with a style that's light and engaging. He provides personal stories but he doesn't drag them on or get side-tracked. I would highly recommend him for seminars and speaking engagements.
