Make More Money By Working Less (productivity hacks)

- According to Forbes, CEO and founder

Jeff Bezos of Amazon is worth over $135 billion.

He makes so much money that if he were to come across

a 100 dollar bill on the sidewalk

and if he stopped to pick it up, he would be losing money.

He's worth so much in fact that if he stopped to pick up

$1000 on the sidewalk, he would be losing money.

He makes on average $2489 per second.

Jeff Bezos understands that time equals money.

Every successful entrepreneur, business owner,

anybody that has achieved wealth

understands that time is money

and you only have so much time in the day.

You have 86,400 seconds per day

to be the most productive that you can.

I've learned over the years that I only have so much time

and I've got family, I've got business,

and I gotta make sure that I'm utilizing my time

to the fullest potential, and because of that,

I had to implement productivity hacks

throughout my day to make sure

that I'm getting everything that I can.

So today I'm going to share with you

what are the seven productivity hacks

I've implemented in my life that have made me

tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Stick around to the end because number seven,

I think you're going to be shocked

on what this hack is because it goes against a common belief

about what productivity is and things that help you.

I think you're going to be shocked so let's find out

what these seven productivity hacks are right now.

(upbeat music)

What's going on y'all, welcome to Wealth Hacker TV,

the channel dedicated to teaching you new ways

to grow wealth that is not taught to you

in schools or by your parents.

I'm your host, Jeff Rose,

and today we're talking about productivity

and how productivity equals making money.

Being productive will make you money,

will make you rich, will help you grow wealth.

So in my case, I've got four kids.

I've got a big family, I've got a lot of things going on

so I have to make sure that every second

that I have that I'm getting the most out of it

so that whenever I drop my kids off from school

when I get back to my office, I'm ready to crank out

whatever I need to for the day.

So the first productivity hack

that I have is I have to be laser focused.

I have to start each day

with a laser focus of intentionality

and I do that by reviewing my goals every single day.

I review my goals before I go to bed.

I review my goals when I wake up first thing in the morning.

I review my goals every single day.

I will write out the things I have to do that day.

I'll write the things that I have to do that week

or that month because I want to make sure

that everyday that I know what I'm doing.

So if you're just rolling out of bed

and you don't have your goals,

you don't have your to-do's for the day,

and you're just going about your day

not really sure what you have to get done,

you're just wasting precious minutes.

You gotta attack each day.

You gotta know what are the things that have to get done.

So I have a few different ways that I do that.

The first off, I have different journals that I use.

I've bounced around different journals,

testing them out, trying them out.

And they all work to some degree,

just gotta find the journal that works for you.

So find a journal that allows you to write down the things,

your goals for that day, for that week, for that month.

Also what I do is I have these oversized index cards.

And these things are all over my house.

My wife hates them, but with these index cards

I can write down, what are my goals for the day?

What are my goals for the week?

And I make sure that I do that every day

and they're there, they're visible.

There's no question, they're in my face

so I know what I have to get done.

And that's how I can attack my day being laser focused.

The second productivity hack

that I use is called the Pomodoro Technique.

And what this technique allows you to do

is to be laser focused for a set period of time

usually 20 or 25 minutes.

And then you take an intentional five minute break.

What this does it allows you

to dive into whatever project, whatever assignment,

whatever it is that you have to get done.

And you focus on that for that set period of time.

You set a timer to make sure

that you are being committed to that time period.

And you can use any timer that you want.

You can use the stopwatch on your phone.

They have Pomodoro apps that you can download.

You can use a kitchen timer,

doesn't really matter what you use,

just some timer that until that timer goes off,

you don't do anything else but whatever that task is.

And then when that timer goes off,

you take an intentional break.

You take five minutes to go get a drink of water,

to stand up to stretch, do whatever you need to do

to get some fresh air so that you can get rejuvenated

and to go back and attack your day.

The third productivity hack that I use

has to do with email because all of us get email.

And I don't know about you, but I hate email.

I understand it's important to communicate

with your customers, to communicate with your team,

so I know email is an essential part of your day

and part of your business, but you have to make sure

that you're not getting sucked in.

Now I love when I read the book,

"4-Hour Workweek", by Tim Ferriss.

And Tim Ferriss he had a hack

to where he only checked his email twice a day.

And any time that you emailed him,

you would get an auto-responder letting you know

that he's not going to check your email

until four o'clock the next day

or whatever time he had in his book.

So for me, I have certain email addresses

if people want to reach out to me

and I've set up auto-responders so that they know,

that listen I got your email and somebody from my team

is going to get back to you.

If it's something that you need to get back to me,

my team will forward to me,

and I get back to you when I can.

Another productivity hack to do with email

and I already kind of mentioned this,

is that I have an assistant that filters all my emails

and she only forwards the ones that are most important.

Now you might not be at this point

where you can actually hire an assistant

or hire somebody to help manage your emails,

but I can promise you it's not as expensive

as you think that it would.

So find someway, somehow that you can protect your time.

Find a way that you can outsource your emails

to somebody else to filter only the good ones

and all the junk can go on to somebody else.

And the last email productivity hack is the one

that I love because I'm a video guy, I love doing video.

And oftentimes, I'll get these email responses

and I want to respond, but it takes a long time

to write out, to type out a well-thought-out email response.

So I use a tool called BombBomb.com,

I mean you gotta love the name.

But BombBomb allows me to send

a video message that's already in my Gmail

so I don't have to go to another software.

It's right there in my Gmail

that I can hit the record button, record myself,

and hit send so that I am responding to that person

with a thoughtful response and is a video.

It takes me two minutes to send a video

as opposed to taking 10 to 15 minutes

to type up a thoughtful response.

So yes, BombBomb is a paid software program that I use,

you could also just record on your phone,

there's other tools that you can use that are free.

But just find a way to be more productive with your emails.

Alright, the fourth productivity hack

has to do with writing.

So when I started my blog, I used to sit down

and I would write, I would type out

every single blog post and it would take me an hour,

two hours, sometimes three hours to write one article.

Like that's, not just because I'm a slow typer,

because it just requires so much mental juice

that it would just drain me.

When I finally realized that

this is not me being the most productive as I possibly can,

I started to look at other options.

How could I write articles,

how I could write anything at a much more productive pace?

So that's when I discovered that instead of writing,

I need to talk because guess what, I like to talk.

So for me, anytime that I write anything,

I'm not sitting down to type it out.

I am using some sort of transcription service.

Right now I pay for an app called MobileAssistant

and MobileAssistant allows me on my phone

to just talk whatever I need to say.

So whether it be a blog post,

whether it be notes to my assistant,

whether it's an email, all I have to do

is talk into the app, then I hit send

and within 24 hours I get a response.

I get a typed response back of whatever I said.

Doesn't matter how many words it is

or how long I talk, I get that transcription back

and that has saved me so much time.

So much time I can't even quantify.

Now with MobileAssistant that is

a monthly reoccurring service

so maybe you're not in that position

where you want to pay monthly for a transcription service,

but there are other tools that you can use like Rev.com.

Rev.com allows you to submit an audio file

and just like MobileAssistant, within 24 hours

or sometimes sooner, you get the transcription back.

So you can use the voice memos app on your phone,

record yourself, submit that to Rev

and you're just paying the price per minute.

Another way I've been more productive

is through shortcuts or TextExpander.

Now if you have an iPhone,

it already has this feature built-in so any shortcut.

So if you have typical responses

that you send to friends or even like an email response,

if you type in the shortcut, boom, there it is.

That's how I respond to a lot of my commenters on YouTube

is by utilizing the shortcuts.

There's also a piece of software you can purchase

that's not very much called TextExpander.

And with this, anything that you find yourself

typing on a regular basis, instead of typing

the entire thing out, you can build in these shortcuts

that allow you to save so much time.

Having these shortcuts in place

instead of having to type out all this junk,

my goodness, you get so much time back into your hands

to do things that are going to make you more money.

Alright, so if you haven't figured this out yet,

I don't like to type, I don't like to send emails,

I like to just like talk and do video.

So at no surprise, next hack for me are messaging hacks.

So how am I messaging people?

Whether that be through Facebook messenger

or sending text messages to family,

to friends, to people that I know.

And one of the ways I've been able to do that very similar

than what I've already shared, is voice to text.

So any time I want to send a text message,

I mean I hate texting, but if I could talk it out loud

and send that voice to text.

Then that's going to save me so much more time.

Now I've mentioned longer emails,

that's where I'm using a service like MobileAssistant

to where I can just talk it out or sending a video.

Another thing that I love to do and I know especially

with iPhones and other iPhone users is the audio message.

So instead of sending a text message

where I have to type it out,

I can just talk and send whatever I need to send.

And that's all through messages,

all through sending like text messages.

Now another way that I've been able to be productive

with messaging is through an app called Voxer.

Voxer is by far one of my most favorite

and most used apps that I have on my phone.

Voxer is an app that allows you to record a message

and you can have a group of people,

you can send individual messages

and then that person can respond

or that group can respond whenever they have time.

So it's kind of like an ongoing chat

except that you don't have to type,

all you've got to do is talk.

All my mastermind groups, we use Voxer.

I have several friends that I keep in contact with,

we use Voxer just to allow us to keep in touch

about what's going on and you get so much more hearing

that person's voice as opposed to sending them a text.

So if you've not checked out Voxer yet, please do.

It is a productivity hacker's dream.

Alright the next productivity hack

all has to with protecting your time.

And the first one goes out to all you commenters

always telling to get to the point

that I'm talking too long.

It's like okay, I get it, I am a bit long-winded, sure.

But there's this little feature

that YouTube allows you to watch videos

at a much faster rate.

You can watch me on 2x speed,

you can watch me on 3x speed,

you can four, five, I can just talk as fast as I want.

You can watch me as fast or as slow as you want.

That is how I digest all of my YouTube videos.

I'm always watching at least at 2x speed.

And that's the exact same way that I listen to podcasts,

that's the same way that I listen to audiobooks.

I don't listen on real-time,

I'm always listening a little bit faster.

With audiobooks, it's either one and half

or two times as fast.

Because guess what, I can digest the content

that much faster and going back to the Voxer app,

you can actually speed up how fast you're listening

to the messages there so I can just listen

to all of these messages at a much faster clip.

You gotta protect your time, these are a few ways

that I protect my time by digesting content.

Now another way that I protect my time is with calls.

Like I do have to have calls with team members,

with people that want to pitch me certain things,

or sometimes people that want to network with me.

And every time that I have a call, this is a hack

that I got from somebody else,

I don't remember who I got this from,

but kudos to you for sharing this with me.

But this hack is killer when you get on a call,

before you start the call, let the other person know a time,

a hard deadline, when you have to get off.

If you ever find yourself being trapped

in conversations or trapped in meetings,

maybe somebody wants to meet you for coffee,

and you just don't have the courage

to tell them you gotta go.

Well if you start the meeting with a hard deadline

when you have to stop, when you have to leave,

when you hang up, when you have to get off your Skype

or video conferencing call, whatever that is.

Let them know up front before you get into it

what time you have to go.

What is your hard deadline?

Alright, we're onto the last one,

as I mentioned at the beginning of this video,

this productivity hack is actually a productivity killer

if you don't use it the right way.

What am I talking about?

I'm talking about this bad boy right here.

Your iPhone, your Android, your smart phone.

As we all know, these things are amazing.

I mentioned Voxer, I mentioned MobileAssistant.

You know, there are apps

that have increased my productivity so much more.

But it can also suck away,

it can kill your productivity if you don't protect yourself.

So for me, I had to set certain boundaries.

I had to protect myself from not wasting my life away

on this stupid device.

So how have I done that?

Well the first one is probably going to be a big shock

and it may give you some uncomfortableness,

it might make you queasy, but I have deleted

all social media apps from my phone.

Yep, that's right, that means I don't have Twitter,

I don't have Facebook, I don't have Instagram,

And I don't even have YouTube on my phone.

What, isn't that crazy?

Now if I do need to access any of these,

I can access them from a web browser

so if there is something on there

I have to do or I have to respond to somebody,

I can get to it, but it is one extra step

that I have to do that prevents me from getting sucked in

on all your cute baby pictures

and all your political rants,

whatever it is you want to share on social.

I'm sorry, I know you've got a lot of great stuff to share,

but guess what, I've got more things

I want to do, more things I need to get done.

I've got to be more productive

so all the social media apps are done.

The other big one are the stupid notifications.

Have you ever found yourself

where you're talking to somebody

or somebody's talking to you

and all of a sudden your phone dings

or their phone dings and you're in the middle

of a conversation, all of a sudden

they go back to their phone because they gotta see

who texted them or who sent them a private message

or who liked their latest Instagram post.

Notifications are a productivity killer,

you've got to be laser focused

and if you keep allowing yourself

to be interrupted by notifications,

you're going to kill your productivity.

Turn off all of your notifications.

And the last thing with my phone,

when I am ready to get down to business,

when I'm ready to get some stuff done,

I put my phone on Do Not Disturb or Airplane Mode

so that if I'm recording a video,

if I'm sending out an email or typing up a sales pitch,

whatever it is I'm doing, I don't want to be interrupted

so turn on your Do Not Disturb, turn on Airplane Mode.

Shut off the notifications so you can get

the most out of your day.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this video,

you've got 86,400 seconds per day

to be the most productive as possible as you can

and if you're wasting it away

being interrupted with notifications,

typing out emails, sending text messages to people

that it's just a waste of time.

You're not going to hack your wealth,

you're just going to stay broke.

You've got to be more productive.

Which productivity hack do you use the most?

Are there any of these that you don't use

that you're planning on using,

or is there something you discovered

that allows you to hack your productivity.

I want to know, our reader's want to know,

our community wants to know,

so share in the comments below

what those productivity hacks.

I appreciate you, I appreciate the time.

This is Jeff Rose reminding you that it's your money,

it's your life, only you can make it awesome,

as long as you're being productive, peace.