I'm a big fan of the blog Zen Habits written by Leo Babauta. It's a great blog about keeping your life simple while still achieving everything you want to. Leo himself practices what he preaches, and aims to simplify his life while still getting twice as much done as the average productivity blogger. For instance, back in the early days of his blog Leo worked 2 jobs, updated his blog with quality posts daily and had time for his wife and 6 children. I consider myself a fairly productive person, but I've got nothing on Leo. Here's how he does it all.
First, Leo has a very set morning ritual. Leo is a big advocate of early rising, which is the practice of waking up very, very early in the morning while the rest of the world is still asleep. It's an idea that he got from Steve Pavlina, and both swear by its ability to start your day off on the right foot. Leo wakes up at 4:30am every day of the week. He says that this gives him plenty of time to exercise and get in a couple of hours of work in before any other distractions come up.
Next, Leo explained that he used his 'free' time intelligently. While many people take lulls in their work day to surf the web and check Facebook, Leo would take the time to write in between his work tasks. He said that his boss was well aware that he did this, and that it was OK because he still got a ton of high quality work done, and that he didn't have any problems because of this.
Leo argues that it's best to work in bursts. Instead of laboring over what he does and really agonizing over it, Leo explains that he prefers to give some thought to what he wants to produce when he's driving, exercising, walking, or is otherwise occupied. That way when he sits down to write he has already worked through a lot of the problems and is able to accomplish a lot in a short
period of time. He has plenty of experience writing, somewhere around 20 years, so he feels very comfortable and natural writing, and he loves to do it, which all adds up to his ability to write very, very quickly. Developing that competence at what you love to do takes out a lot of the guess work and makes it that much easier. In addition, he breaks all his tasks down into smaller tasks so that when he sits down to work, there is always something manageable to quickly tackle.First, Leo has a very set morning ritual. Leo is a big advocate of early rising, which is the practice of waking up very, very early in the morning while the rest of the world is still asleep. It's an idea that he got from Steve Pavlina, and both swear by its ability to start your day off on the right foot. Leo wakes up at 4:30am every day of the week. He says that this gives him plenty of time to exercise and get in a couple of hours of work in before any other distractions come up.
Next, Leo explained that he used his 'free' time intelligently. While many people take lulls in their work day to surf the web and check Facebook, Leo would take the time to write in between his work tasks. He said that his boss was well aware that he did this, and that it was OK because he still got a ton of high quality work done, and that he didn't have any problems because of this.
Leo argues that it's best to work in bursts. Instead of laboring over what he does and really agonizing over it, Leo explains that he prefers to give some thought to what he wants to produce when he's driving, exercising, walking, or is otherwise occupied. That way when he sits down to write he has already worked through a lot of the problems and is able to accomplish a lot in a short
Finally, Leo sets aside time and room in his life specifically for his family. Instead of saying he'll share time with his family when it's available, he specifically sets aside nights and weekends for his family. Instead of working or thinking about work in the evenings, he plays with his kids. He doesn't write or otherwise work on the weekends. Even though he published and updated his work on the weekends, he writes them during the week and sets them to automatically post.
Leo continues to be one of the most prolific and successful bloggers out there, as he now has been able to quit his other jobs and simply write full time after years of developing and taking his own advice.
Looking to take your life and your work to the next level? Check out my site Living Better Working Better [http://www.livingbetterworkingbetter.com/]. At [http://www.livingbetterworkingbetter.com/], I write about all sorts of topics guaranteed to change your world for the better.
By Sam Stieler
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