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Productivity VIP - Audio

Hello my special VIP member and welcome to this month’s new lesson. Now, this month’s lesson is about getting things done. It’s about accomplishing things. It’s about productivity.

Now, productivity, of course, you hear this word a lot in business and economics, but it’s also a very general word. Basically, “productivity” means, how much work do you get finished. How much work do you do in a certain amount of time? It also has the idea of how good is the work. Is the quality good or is it not so good. So, those are the different elements of productivity. How much work, how much time and the quality of the work.

So, obviously, what we want, ideally, is to get a lot of work done in a short time and it’s really high quality. So what is the secret to that? Because I know that a lot of people ask this question, it’s not just in business. For example, with your own English learning, I know that you want to maximize your learning. In other words, you would like to improve as much as possible in as short a time as possible, right? You would rather learn a lot and improve a lot in a couple months than improve a little bit in several years.

And, of course, this is one of the problems with normal school. It’s not very productive, right? You go to your classes, you take your English classes, for years and years and years and years, middle school, maybe high school, university and then, later, maybe adult schools and, yet, the improvement is very, very slow.

Of course, you do improve. Just as long as you’re putting in some effort you’re going to improve somewhat, but the problem is it’s just not very productive, right? You’re not improving very quickly and what we want in all things is to increase our productivity and I’ve been thinking about this a lot. See, I’ve had to think about this a lot.

When I first started Effortless English, it was just me, in my apartment, recording with my microphone at home some lessons, right? In fact, my original lessons, they were recorded in my apartment. That’s why you might hear some bus noises sometimes from underneath my window. There are some little noises in that and that’s because it was just me.

Now in the beginning, I didn’t have to worry so much about being productive, right? It was a new company, everything is just starting and I could slowly if I wanted to. It was fine, but now, almost four years later things have changed. Now I find myself very, very busy all the time. I’m traveling constantly. I’m doing seminars and workshops in other countries. I’ve got this VIP Program, so I’m giving you new lesson sets every single month. I work with my friends, Kristen and Joe, with another company, Learn Real English and we have different kinds of lessons for those.

Now I have people working for me. I have a personal assistant and, of course, we have our member services guy. And suddenly, I really need to be more productive, I can’t just be inefficient anymore. So, I’ve been investigating this idea of productivity – how do we get high-quality work in a short time and a lot of it, finished – and I’ve come across some principles to help you.

This will help you with your efforts to improve your English speaking. It will also help you at your job. If you’re a student, it will help you get more done and do a better job in school with your different school projects and tests and papers. So it doesn’t matter what you’re doing. Even if you’re a mom at home and you’ve got a lot of chores and things around the house to do and a lot of things to do with your children, these principles work in any situation.

Some of them are counterintuitive. Now, “intuitive” means kind of common sense. It’s what we naturally would normally think would be correct. “Counterintuitive” means that what we think should be correct actually is not that, in fact, the opposite is actually the best thing to do. That’s called counterintuitive.

In some ways with productivity, doing the opposite of what we think we should do is actually more effective, more efficient, and more powerful. So let’s talk now about some of these principles.

Now the first principle and probably the most important that I have discovered about being productive is about deadlines and time. How much time do you give yourself to do something.

Now, when I was in school and most of my life, I liked to have a lot of time to do things and if you’re like me you would wait. Let’s say you had a paper due, a big paper at school you had to do and it was due at the end of the semester. When would you write that paper? Well, if you were like me, you would write it the week before it was due. In fact, if you were like me, you’d probably write it about one or two days before it was due, right? That’s called procrastination – waiting ‘til the very end – and a lot of people do this.

Same with work projects. You’ve got a work project with a deadline; you tend to wait until close to the end to do it, ‘til the last possible moment. We all do this. This is human nature. There are some very good students and good workers who are more organized and they will do things earlier. Good for you if you’re one of those people. Good job, but most people procrastinate and they wait.

So I started thinking about this more and I realized something. I realized well, if I wait until the last day and do the paper that means I don’t need a full semester to write a paper. If I compress the time, I will actually get it done much faster with much less pain.

You see, there’s a productivity principle that work expands to fill the time you give it. If you give yourself two months to finish a project, it will take you probably two months. If you give yourself two weeks to finish that same project, you’ll get it done in two weeks and if you give yourself two days, you’ll do it in two days.

This is an important productivity point, because what it says is that we actually should shorten the time. Even if our boss gives us three months, we, ourselves, should give ourselves the shortest possible time to do the project. We should actually make the deadline shorter and closer and I’ll talk a little bit about why this works, why it’s so effective, but that’s the first principle is to shorten the time to do any job.

If you think it will take one month, give yourself only two weeks. If you think it will take six months to complete, give yourself only two months. I know you’re thinking oh, no, that’s going to be stressful. No. Honestly, if you try this, it’s actually much less stressful.

See, here’s the way that’s the most efficient way to work and to accomplish anything.

It’s not to constantly be working all the time, what’s actually much more efficient and powerful is to work in bursts, bursts. A burst is kind of like an explosion. It’s doing a lot in a short time. So what you do is you work in one intense burst. You do a lot in a short time then you totally and completely rest and play.

You don’t think about the project or work. You don’t think about it at all. You just totally let yourself rest, play, do something else for a while. Then you work in another intense short burst. Then you relax totally and completely and play. That is the most efficient and effective and productive way to get things done. Let me give you an example from my own life, from Effortless English.

So I always have a lot of lessons to record. Let’s imagine I have 10 full lesson sets that I need to record. Well, I’ve done this in many different ways. Now my normal way was to just give myself a long time. I thought okay, 10 lessons. I’ll do one per month, 10 months. That will be easy, but what did I do every single month? Every month I procrastinated and I waited until the end of the month to do the lesson set.

Now the problem with that is that even though I’m procrastinating and waiting, it’s always in my mind. I’m always worrying about it a little bit. I’m always thinking about it, so I can never totally relax, never totally rest, because I always know oh, I gotta’ finish those lessons. Oh, I gotta’ finish those lessons. It’s always in my mind and if I give myself 10 months, it mean it’s always there for 10 months bothering me, causing me a little bit of stress and worry, not allowing me to really relax and play. So it’s a big problem.

What I found instead is I give myself 10 days and it works so much better. I’ll say 10 days, I’m recording 10 sets. That’s one a day and boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, I do them. I get them finished in 10 days and then the rest of the time, the other nine and a half months I can totally and completely relax or focus on other things.

In fact, when I recorded Power English, my best lessons, I actually gave myself less than 10 days. I did 30 something lesson sets in about ah; it was probably about nine days. Thirty, 32, 34 lesson sets in nine days.

So why is this powerful? It’s because of something called flow. You see, if I did 10 sets in 10 months it means, number one, I’m worrying about them all the time and that’s stressful, number two, I’m always being interrupted, right? I’ll do one lesson set and I’ll kind of get my energy and I’ll be focused and I’ll finish that one set and then nothing.

Then 30 more days until I do the next one and so I kind of forget about it and then I’ve gotta’ get myself back motivated and energized again.

That’s why the quality is actually worse when I take a longer time, because I’m being interrupted. I’m not flowing. Have you ever heard of that, flow? “Flow” means free movement, but we sometimes talk about flow with work. It means you’re really doing a great job and you’re getting a lot finished and you’re really totally focused and concentrated. That’s what happens when you do a lot in a short time.

See, if I’m doing them every single day they get better and better, right? The first day maybe I’m a little rusty. “Rusty” means out of practice. I haven’t practiced in a while, but then the second day I’ve already done one, now I’m doing the second one. Well, I’m used to it, right? I’m used to it. My energy is higher. I’m used to doing the mini stories.

I’m used to asking the questions. I’m used to speaking with energy. It’s easier. The second day will be higher quality, the third day, even better.

You see, I got momentum. It means I’m moving forward. I got that energy going. I’m used to doing it. My mind is focused on this. So the more I focus it, the more I make my time period short, the quality gets better and better, because I’m really totally focused on just doing that work.

I’m not being interrupted all the time. I’m not having large gaps of time between my work, so I get into a flow state. “Flow state” means a very concentrated mental state; super concentrated, super productive. Everything else kind of goes away and I’m just working on that thing and I’m doing a great job.

That’s why it’s so important, then, to give yourself a shorter time, more concentrated, because you actually will gain a lot more. You’ll do a better job, higher quality. You’ll learn faster, if you’re learning something. You’ll get more done. Your concentration and focus will be much, much better by working in short concentrated bursts then taking a break.

So let’s talk about English. How could you do this? Well, here’s what I recommend for your English learning – alternate super intense months with relaxed months. So, for example, you might take one month, let’s say this month, and just be really, really intensive with your English learning, like three-four hours a day. So, in other words, you would carry your iPod and every moment, every free moment of your day, you would put that iPod on and you’d play an Effortless English lesson or you’d play an audio book.

You’d play some kind of English listening every moment.

I mean you wake up in the morning, you turn on your computer and you play it while you’re, you know, washing your face and brushing your teeth and then on your way to work, if you’re going to a job, you would put in that iPod and you’d listen to it on the way to work. If you’re home with your kids, you’d be playing it and whenever they’re taking a nap, you’d be listening to it.

At lunch, during your lunch break, every single moment of the day you’d be listening to English, listening to English, listening to lessons, listening to other English. Very, very concentrated, very intense, a burst for one month, three-four-five hours a day, every moment you have.

Now, of course, it’s hard to do that, you know, month after month. You can’t sustain that forever. You’re going to get tired. So what you do is after that month the next month is a relaxed month. It’s just relaxation. You don’t even worry about English very much. Yeah, you might carry your iPod, you might listen an hour a day, if you’re feeling lazy you won’t. You’ll be relaxed. You won’t be focused on English. You’ll be focusing on other things, enjoying your life. You’ll choose to listen to English or not, depending on how you feel.

Then that would be your second month, it would be a relaxed month. Very, very relaxed, not pushing yourself at all. You’d really let your brain and your mind and your body rest and then what would you do month three? Boom, another intense month, lots and lots and lots of English every day, every moment you can. English, English, English, English, English for another 30 days and then, again, the following month another rest month, very relaxed. So I think this is actually the ideal, best way to improve your English speaking.

Now, in the normal Welcome Guide for my normal lessons, my original lessons, I don’t talk about this, because it’s a little advanced for most learners and, most people, it’s easier if I tell them, most members, if I just tell them, you know, one hour a day every day. It’s sort of easy. It’s a routine that everybody understands and that’s why I tell my normal members to do just that, but you’re a VIP so I’m giving you something a little more advanced and this is really a more powerful, productive, fast way to improve much more quickly by alternating very intense bursts of learning.

Like one full month, just lots and lots of it, hours and hours every day, super focused and concentrated. Then the next month totally relaxed, very easy. Then the next month very concentrated, focused, lots and lots of English every day. Then the next month very relaxed, resting. That, I believe, is the most powerful, most efficient, most productive way to improve your English speaking.

So give it a try the next two months. I would like you this month to have a super concentrated month, lots and lots and lots of English for four weeks as much as you possibly can and then next month the opposite. Totally relaxed, don’t push yourself at all, just rest. Take it easy. Yes, you can listen to a little English, but don’t make it work.

Just make it fun and relaxed and very easy, okay?

All right, so those are our productivity, you know, principles for this month and I’ll talk more about them in the audio commentary, but you’ve got your homework for this month. It’s a simple principle, simple idea, but very, very powerful by concentrating things in short periods of time, focusing on them and then totally resting and then alternating this a lot. It’s the most productive way to do anything, to accomplish anything, to learn anything.

All right, woo! I’m getting hot just talking about this. I’m excited about it, because this has helped me so much with my business and my life. Now when I do work for Effortless English this is how I work. I do a lot in a short time then I take a break. Then I do a lot in a short time and then I take a break. In this way, I get so much more done and the quality is better too. All right, so do this in your own life.

Have a great day and a great month. I’m so happy to teach you. I’ll see you again soon, bye-bye.