Keep trying new things. There’s another phrase I think about quite often. Keep trying new things. On the surface, it sounds so normal – duh, of course, I should keep trying to build good habits. But think about our daily schedule: Most of us go to work, come home, maybe work out or watch TV, then do it all over

again…for the rest of our lives. Another thing to add to my list of needed good habits for productivity.

Check out our thoughts on team leverage.

Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it

– Henry David Thoreau

And yet, this list of tiny productivity habits has the potential to alter everything. So let’s examine these habits to see which ones can make a difference in your life.

Establish an early morning routine

Are you a morning person? I certainly am. Give me 1-2 hours of undisturbed time early in the morning and I am immensely more productive later in the day. How many of you nurture your bodies in the morning with water, a healthy breakfast, and light exercise? How about nurturing your minds with meditation, inspirational reading, or journaling? It is amazing what a difference these habits can make.

Good habits … focus on priorities

Ultra-productive people know what their “Most Important Task” is and work on it for one to two hours each morning, without interruptions. What task will have the biggest impact on reaching your goals? What accomplishment will get you more success in business metrics? That’s what you should dedicate your mornings to every day.

Productivity models

For example, here are three ways of thinking about productivity:

The 2-Minute Rule: If something takes less than two minutes, do it now. The goal of this rule is to help you stop procrastinating and take action.

The Ivy Lee Method: Create a to-do list by writing down the six most important things you need to accomplish tomorrow, prioritizing those items, and working on them in order. The goal of this method is to help you work on the most important things first.

The Seinfeld Strategy: Pick a new habit and draw an X on the calendar for each day you stick with the behavior. The goal of this method is to help you maintain consistency and keep your streak of good behavior alive.

Are any of these models perfect? Not. But try combining them. Then you have a strategy that can help you take action right now (The 2-Minute Rule), a strategy that can help you plan your day more effectively (The Ivy Lee Method), and a strategy that can help you maintain consistency in the long-run (The Seinfeld Strategy).

Good personal habits … have balance in life

Intel’s Andy Grove once said, “There is always more to be done, more that should be done, always more than can be done.”

Highly successful people know what they value in life. Yes, work, but also what else they value. They know success is a ‘whole life’ metric. There is no right answer, but for many, these other values include family time, exercise, and giving back.

Let me share a story with you:

The older I get, the more I enjoy Saturday morning. Perhaps it’s the quiet solitude that comes with being the first to rise, or maybe it’s the unbounded joy of not having to be at work. Either way, the first few hours of a Saturday morning are most enjoyable.

Reference: Fall II 2009 NL – Concordia University Irvine, https://www.cui.edu/uploadedFiles/AcademicPrograms/Graduate/Coaching/Fall%20II09

A few weeks ago, I was shuffling toward the garage with a steaming cup of coffee in one hand and the morning paper in the other. What began as a typical Saturday morning turned into one of those lessons that life seems to hand you from time to time. Let me tell you about it:

I turned the dial up into the phone portion of the band on my ham radio to listen to a Saturday morning swap net. Along the way, I came across an older sounding chap, with a tremendous signal and a golden voice. I was intrigued and stopped to listen to what he had to say.

“Well, Tom, it sure sounds like you’re busy with your job. I’m sure they pay you well, but it’s a shame you have to be away from home and your family so much. Hard to believe a young fellow should have to work sixty or seventy hours a week to make ends meet. It’s too bad you missed your daughter’s dance recital,” he continued; “Let me tell you something that has helped me keep my priorities.” And that’s when he began to explain his theory of a “thousand marbles.”

“You see, I sat down one day and did a little arithmetic. The average person lives about seventy-five years. Now then, I multiplied 75 times 52, and I came up with 3,900, which is the number of Saturdays that the average person has in their entire lifetime. Now, stick with me, Tom, I’m getting to the important part.

It took me until I was fifty-five years old to think about all this in any detail,” he went on, “and by that time I had lived through over twenty-eight hundred Saturdays. I got to thinking that if I lived to be seventy-five, I only had about a thousand of them left to enjoy. So I went to a toy store and bought every single marble they had. I ended up having to visit three toy stores to round up 1,000 marbles. I took them home and put them inside a large, clear plastic container right here in the shack next to my gear.

Every Saturday since then, I have taken one marble out and thrown it away. I found that by watching the marbles diminish, I focused more on the really important things in life.

There’s nothing like watching your time here on this earth run out to help get your priorities straight.

What do you think about life balance now?

Use a notebook

Richard Branson has said on more than one occasion that he wouldn’t have been able to build Virgin without a simple notebook, which he takes with him wherever he goes.

In one interview, Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis said, “Always carry a notebook. Write everything down… That is a million-dollar lesson they don’t teach you in business school!”

Ultra-productive people free their minds by writing everything down as the ideas come to them.

Productivity habits … reduce attention to email

Ultra-productive people don’t “check” their e-mail throughout the day. They don’t respond to each vibration or ding to see who has intruded into their inbox.

Instead, like everything else, they schedule a time to process their emails quickly and efficiently. For some, that’s only once a day; for others, it’s morning, noon, and night. Manage your inbox, don’t let it manage you.

Skip meetings whenever you can

Mark Cuban once said, “Never take meetings unless someone is writing a check.” Meetings are notorious time killers.

They often start late, have the wrong people in them, meander around their topics, and run long. You should get out of meetings whenever you can and hold fewer of them yourself. If you do run a meeting, keep it short and solve simple objectives.

Productive work habits … observing

Carefully watch things around you to help gain insights into, and ideas for, new ways of doing things. Pay particular attention to areas outside your natural areas of interest.

Don’t fear to say no

Billionaire Warren Buffet once said, “The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say ‘no’ to almost everything.” Remember, you only have 1,440 minutes in a day. Don’t give them away easily.

Insanely productive habits … use the 80/20 rule

Known as the Pareto Principle, in most cases, 80 percent of results come from only 20 percent of activities. Ultra-productive people know which activities drive the greatest results. Focus on those and ignore the rest. You don’t get extra credit for solving trivial action items.

Creating change

I loved this post from Seth Godin’s blog:

The problem with complaining about the system

…is that the system can’t hear you. Only people can.

And the problem is that people in the system are too often swayed to believe that they have no power over the system, that they are merely victims of it, pawns, cogs in a machine bigger than themselves.

Alas, when the system can’t hear you, and those who can believe they have no power, nothing improves.

Systems don’t mistreat us, misrepresent us, waste our resources, govern poorly, support an unfair status quo and screw things up–people do.

If we care enough, we can make it change.

Delegate often

Ultra-productive people don’t ask, “How can I do this task?” Instead, they ask, “How can this task get done?” They take the I out of it as much as possible.

Ultra-productive people don’t have control issues, and they are not micro-managers. In many cases, good enough is, well, good enough.

Be decisive

How many times have you opened a piece of regular mail — a bill perhaps — and then put it down, only to deal with it again later? How often do you read an e-mail and then close it and leave it in your inbox to deal with later? Highly successful people try to “touch it once.”

If it takes less than five or ten minutes — whatever it is — they deal with it right then and there. It reduces stress since it won’t be in the back of their minds, and it is more efficient since they won’t have to re-read or re-evaluate the item again in the future.

Take care of yourself

You can’t make more minutes in the day, but you can increase your energy to increase your attention, focus, and productivity. Highly successful people don’t skip meals, sleep, or breaks in the pursuit of more, more, more.

Instead, they view food as fuel, sleep as recovery, and breaks as opportunities to recharge to get even more done.

The bottom line

We’re often told that innovation is about ideas, but that’s only partly true. If your idea is revolutionary enough, your biggest problem won’t be having it stolen, but getting anyone to take it seriously at all. That’s why the hardest part of innovation is not coming up with an idea, but getting it adopted. Talent will only take you so far; you also need the good habits and grit to stick with it.

So what habits do you need to add to this list to be more productive AND successful?

All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.

When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step.

Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Are you devoting enough energy to continually improving your continuous learning?

Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.