How to Dramatically Improve Your Productivity Each Day

Productivity is a three-part process that will make or break your success. This begins with thought creation, then commitment (verbal or written) and then taking action and following through. The true joy of any process is the doing part. Success comes when you improve your skills and continue forward with consistency, repetition, and a positive mindset.

In this article, I will focus specifically on the second phase of productivity: Commitment.

This is where you can make or break your day. You need a plan — this is the key to habit making and it’s what ensures your success. First, the speaking part:

We can speak positively over our lives in two ways: 1) Actually speaking the words and 2) Sending the same words from our mind into our subconscious mind via, “the voice inside our head.” Both are powerful ways to build faith. Napoleon Hill once perfectly summed up the subconscious part:

“Auto-suggestion is the agency of control through which an individual may voluntarily feed his subconscious mind on thoughts of a creative nature, or, by neglect, permit thoughts of a destructive nature to find their way into this rich garden of the mind.”

The key here is to speak positively and to do this in the morning, afternoon, and evening — all throughout the day. The most successful people practice auto-suggestion to feed their subconscious mind, in an effort to fuel their success. Verbalize the words. Write them down and make a commitment.

Then, let the voice inside your head play these back in a positive, re-affirming way. You can begin here:

Plan Your Day the Night Before

I’m glad that no one keeps a tally of the number of unsuccessful days I’ve lived. Frankly, I’m willing to bet we could all agree to that. What I can tell you is, the unsuccessful days have been the ones that I did not plan. As I have grown over the years in my career, I have dramatically reduced those unsuccessful days by following one simple step:

I have planned my day the previous night.

I recommend that you list out goals that you aim to accomplish each week. Then, highlight the tasks that you want to accomplish each day using the Time Management Quadrant below originally developed by former U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

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You can choose to put these into time slots, depending on whether you use a daily planner or simply a task or milestone list for the day. Once you have something in writing, you’ve made an actionable commitment to getting it done.

Always allow yourself the ability to adapt and change if it’s in your best interest to do so. As the great (if not somewhat crazy) Mike Tyson once said,

“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

Chances are, you won’t need to dodge monster right hooks over the course of your day, but you will encounter adversity and changes that force you to adapt and modify your plan.

Read Your Plan Out Loud

Reading your plan helps you process the information and store it in your conscious and subconscious mind. No matter how good you think your short or long-term memory is, if you don’t write or read your plan, you will forget some information. Recognizing new opportunities is a skill that comes to those who have a clear, prepared mind.

When you visualize what you want to do, you have an image in your imagination. Your imagination gives birth to the ideas, goals, and plans that you have. Suddenly, you have a vivid picture of seeing yourself successfully carry out your goals for the day. As the great Walt Disney once said, “If you can dream it, you can do it.”

The real question is, how committed are you to your success?

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