4 Essential Tools for Achieving More in Less Time

You’ve set ambitious goals for the year. To achieve them, you will need to equip your team with tools to operate as productively and creatively as possible. 

At Michael Hyatt & Company, we have found it critical to streamline our processes and maintain maximum efficiency as we expand. Doing this intentionally will boost your bottom line, as well as help your team maintain the work-life balance they need to sustain their high productivity long term. 

Over the years, my team and I have tried several methods for doing this. After quite a bit of testing, we’ve landed on 4 tools that make a substantial difference. 

Asana. As our team grew, we needed a project management tool to manage our long-term projects in a streamlined way across multiple departments. We’ve used Asana for several years now, and it continues to be extremely effective. It saves quite a bit of time, as everyone on the team knows who is responsible for each area of a project and sees their goals broken down into actionable steps with clear due dates.
Slack. One of the constant struggles my clients bring up is the amount of time they spend sorting and responding to emails. That’s why, at Michael Hyatt & Company, we’ve switched to Slack for internal communication. It essentially incorporates instant messaging, email, and file sharing all in one place, and allows our team to effectively collaborate on projects even in a remote work environment. Over the years I have tried other similar tools, but ultimately found Slack the best for working efficiently.
BackBlaze. Backblaze is a cloud-based computer backup system that runs each day to ensure that your computer is backed up without you needing to manually do it. Once you set it up, it runs in the background. Let’s face it, technology fails sometimes, and without this in place you can lose all of your hard work and waste countless hours getting back up to speed. 
Full Focus Planner. In order for high achievers to keep track of their goals and make steady, incremental progress, you need a tool designed just for you. That’s where the Full Focus Planner comes in. It facilitates goal tracking and review and enables you to prioritize your tasks so that you maintain momentum. 

Help your team reach their highest potential without sacrificing their work-life balance. With the right tools in place you can achieve more with less time. 

 

The Science Behind Why You Need a Hobby

Our bodies weren’t designed to be in a constant state of stress. To put it simply, you can’t work all the time and not feel the negative effects. The solution? Create a rhythm of rest and work. 

High achievers find this hard to believe. When you are driven by the need to achieve, it can be difficult to make time for something that doesn’t tangibly move you closer to your goals. I fell into this trap for years. But the facts are there. Practicing self-care—and, in particular, maintaining a hobby—provides your brain the opportunity to focus on something else, freeing up and recharging your mental energy. When you invest time on something you enjoy outside of work, you gain a greater level of clarity, creativity, and various health benefits—and ultimately improve the quality of your work.

Here are five ideas for hobbies you could engage in and the science behind the benefits they provide:

Exercise. Exercise yields numerous physical health benefits. It also improves brain function. A study out of Harvard showed physical activity can lead to enhanced creativity, quicker learning, sharper memory, and improved concentration. Studies also show that exercise increases overall job satisfaction and productivity.
Outdoor recreation, such fishing or hiking. Getting outdoors is a great way to counterbalance the stress you experience at work. Research shows that just 20–30 minutes outside a day significantly reduces cortisol and stress levels. 
Cooking and gardening. Developing skills with these types of hobbies can boost your self-esteem and increase your happiness. Not only that, but gardening can lower your risk of stroke, osteoporosis, and dementia.
Creative activities, such as photography, painting, or music. Artistic hobbies improve your overall health and well-being. In fact, individuals who play an instrument experience better connectivity between the left and right sides of their brains, improving cognitive function.
Reading. Many people love curling up with a good book. Not only is it enjoyable, but researchers out of Sussex University found that reading can lower stress by as much as 68%. 

I challenge you to think of something outside of your work that you love. Something that inspires you and ignites your passion. Investing time into a hobby has not only enriched my life personally, but I have seen it raise my creativity and productivity at work as well. It can do the same for you. What are you waiting for?

 

You Can Achieve Work-Life Balance This Year

Do you feel caught in the grind? Unable to make time for your family, your health, or hobbies you used to enjoy? Are you caught in the culture of overwork but don’t know how to get out? 

Work-life balance is not a myth. But it also won’t happen without intentionality and practice. I know. I lived a significant portion of my life not even trying to achieve it. I thought I could grind away at work, and the other areas of my life wouldn’t suffer. This couldn’t have been further from the truth. If this is you, I challenge you to prioritize work-life balance. You can achieve it this year, but only if you make it a priority.

Here are five steps you can take to start on the path toward work-life balance:

Ask yourself, “Why am I overworking?” There are several reasons we overwork: it is fun; we find our identity in our work; we enjoy the experience of flow, definable wins, and status/value signaling; or we feel the pressure of our own sky-high expectations. Understanding the root of why you overwork will help you to break the cycle. 
Evaluate if your goals reflect the multi-faceted nature of life. Setting goals in more than one life domain prioritizes balance from the start. When work becomes your primary orientation, you leave out the other life domains. But all the domains are interconnected. They all matter. Your goals should reflect that.
Set appropriate constraints. The truth is, constraints foster productivity, creativity, and freedom. Work will expand to fill as much time as you allow it to. Set hard limits on when you start and end your work day. In doing so, you protect the other life domains and acknowledge that constraints are a reality. 
Understand what balance looks like. Balance is more than just rest. True balance is dynamic. It shifts with the seasons of life and requires continual adjustment and attention. Don’t expect your version of balance to look exactly the same as someone else’s—or even the same from this year to the next. 
Follow through and share your plan. To experience work-life balance, you must share what your version of balance looks like with those around you. Your spouse, coworkers, boss, assistant—they all need to be included and understand your Ideal Week. Take the time to explain your why and the vision behind your goals. This will create a support system you can lean on to help maintain work-life balance. 

You don’t have to be caught in a never-ending cycle of overwork, with your personal life paying the price. You have the freedom to prioritize what matters most to you. What step will you take today to start walking toward work-life balance?

Blending an Ambitious Career with a Meaningful Life

You’ve heard over and over that the key to success is to work harder and longer than everyone else—but you do so at the expense of your health and your loved ones. Or, perhaps you’ve determined the cost isn’t worth it. So you seek out a better sense of well-being but pump the brakes on your ambition. Can you really only have either a thriving career or a healthy personal life? Is there a third option?

 

You Don’t Have to Choose: Win at Work and Succeed in Life

Have you ever found yourself facing an impossible choice? Either win at work—at the expense of your health and relationships—or succeed at life, sacrificing your career goals. For years, I thought there was no other option. I spent almost all of my time at work. Late nights, weekends, all in an effort to achieve more and get ahead in my career. Time with my family was always cut short. My health was pushed down on the priority list. Friendships were put on the backburner. Until it all finally reached a crisis point. 

My experiences taught me that there is a third option. I call it the Double Win. And it is possible. I know. I now live it. My team at Michael Hyatt & Company lives it. And you can live it too. 

To experience the Double Win, you must see life and work in partnership, not opposition. When you succeed in life, you will be more creative and productive at work. As you achieve your goals at work, you will have more confidence and financial stability to put toward your personal priorities. Success in each area fuels the other. 

Here are 3 steps you can take today to experience the Double Win yourself:

Identify what you want. Take the time to reflect on what success looks like for you in each of life’s domains. Clarity will enable you to be intentional and keep you from getting caught up in the cult of overwork. As you work through this step, it is helpful to create a life plan and set annual goals. These tools provide a filter to help you determine if a task or opportunity contributes to your Double Win or distracts you from it.
Communicate what you want. This step can be particularly challenging. It’s difficult to set new boundaries, but it is also necessary. As you communicate with those around you, stay connected to your why—the desires you just identified as you defined your Double Win. This will give you the courage you need to stay the course when others push back.
Arrange your life to get what you want. To experience the Double Win, we teach our clients to eliminate, automate, or delegate tasks that don’t fit in their Desire Zone—where their passion and proficiency meet. Identifying ways to focus your time on where you add the most value frees you up to experience your Double Win.

I spent too many years trapped in the cult of overwork. Driven to succeed in my career, I neglected the other life domains. But that doesn’t have to be your story. You can make a change today. Experience the Double Win for yourself.

The Secret to Achieving More: A Good Night’s Sleep

Caught between the demands of life and work, sleep is often one of the first things to get cut. It’s even become a sort of value-signaling to prioritize work over sleep. But what if sleep is the very thing you need to actually accomplish more? 

The National Sleep Foundation recommends that healthy adults get between seven to nine hours of sleep per night. But according to the CDC, one-third of American adults get fewer than six hours of sleep a night. I have fallen into this trap myself. I have sacrificed a good night’s sleep in the name of productivity. The thing is, staying up late will actually backfire. Insufficient sleep causes fatigue, which impairs your ability to perform. It also has detrimental health effects, including elevated stress hormones, obesity, cardiovascular disease, and stroke. 

Without enough sleep you will start the next day with an inability to focus, slow reaction time, and impaired mental performance. This will all combine to make it more difficult to achieve your goals. The solution? Prioritize sleep. 

Here are four key benefits to sleeping the recommended number of hours per night: 

Sleep enhances your mental clarity. Have you ever found yourself at work and unable to answer a question? Your mind has suddenly gone blank. Without sleep you aren’t able to perform your best. According to the National Sleep Foundation, insufficient sleep has an estimated economic impact of over $411 billion each year in the United States alone.
Sleep improves your ability to learn and grow. Without proper sleep, the neurons in your brain aren’t able to function properly. This prevents your consolidating and recalling information effectively. 
Sleep refreshes our emotional state. You have probably heard the phrase “woke up on the wrong side of the bed.” What this phrase highlights is actually how lack of adequate sleep makes you more likely to be angry, sad, or irritable. Sleep lowers the stress chemicals in our brain and improves our overall mood. 
Sleep revitalizes our bodies. Research shows that while you sleep, your body is busy at work resetting nearly every tissue in your body. It’s essential for every organ. Prioritizing sleep will boost your immune system, cardiovascular health, and more.

Our bodies are designed to function best with sleep. In the moment, when you’re thinking about staying up late to finish a project, you may think it’s your best option in order to achieve more. But, ultimately, if you want to win at work and succeed in life, it all must begin with a good night’s sleep.