15 Secrets Successful People Know About Time Management by Kevin Kruse

15 minute read

New York Times bestselling author, Kevin Kruse, presents the remarkable findings of his study of ultra-productive people. Based on survey research and interviews with billionaires, Olympic athletes, straight-A students, and over 200 entrepreneurs—-including Mark Cuban, Kevin Harrington, James Altucher, John Lee Dumas, Pat Flynn, Grant Cardone, and Lewis Howes—-Kruse answers the question: what are the secrets to extreme productivity?

Notes from, “Kruse, Kevin. 15 Secrets Successful People Know About Time Management: The Productivity Habits of 7 Billionaires, 13 Olympic Athletes, 29 Straight-A Students, and 239 Entrepreneurs. The Kruse Group. Kindle Edition.”

The Power 1440

Time is unique because it’s the one true equalizer. Some people are born rich, others born poor. Some have Ivy League degrees, while others are high school dropouts. Some are genetically gifted athletes, others physically challenged. But we all have the same minutes in a day. Time is the lowest common denominator. (p. 17).

1,440 Minutes in a Day

The magic number that can change your life is 1,440. I encourage you to try it yourself. Just draw a big “1,440” on a piece of paper and tape it on your office door, under your TV, next to your computer monitor—wherever it will best serve as a constant reminder of the very limited and oh so precious time you have each day. (p. 18).

SECRET #1 Time is your most valuable and scarcest resource.

The Power of Proper Priorities

Therese Macan, a professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, conducted groundbreaking research into time management, productivity, and stress, discovering that the two most important keys are priorities and mechanics (i.e., the mechanics of implementing time management techniques and tactics). (p. 22).

Put simply, the most important things are to know what to focus on and how you are going to get it done. I call this always knowing your most important task, or MIT. (p. 22).

After identifying your MIT, you need to turn it into a calendar item and book it as early in your day as possible. Dan Ariely, a Duke University professor of psychology and behavioral economics, suggests that most people are most productive and have the highest cognitive functioning in the first two hours after they’re fully awake. (pp. 25-26).

SECRET #2 Identify your Most Important Task (MIT) and work on it each day before doing anything else.

Stop Making To-Do Lists—Do This Instead

To-do lists should be called nagging wish-lists. A series of tasks you hope to accomplish, without a specific plan as to when you’ll get them all done. (p. 30).

Highly successful people don’t have a to-do list, but they do have a very well-kept calendar. One of the most consistent messages I got from all the interviews and research I did for this book was that no matter what it is, if you truly want to get it done, schedule time for it. (p. 32).

Schedule a chunk of time for everything that is important to you; this is called “time blocking” or “time boxing.”
Important items should be scheduled as early in the day as possible.
Don’t cancel goals; reschedule them if necessary.
Treat your time-blocked calendar entries as if they were appointments with your doctor; they are that important.

SECRET #3 Work from your calendar, not a to-do list.

The Procrastination Cure

Procrastination is the habit of putting off important, less pleasurable tasks by doing easier, more pleasurable tasks. Things like email, Twitter, Facebook, food, and TV are excellent ways to procrastinate. (pp. 41-42).

To beat procrastination once and for all, you have to understand it. You don’t procrastinate because you’re lazy. You procrastinate because:

You lack enough motivation, and/or
You underestimate the power of present emotions versus future emotions when you set your goals or make your task list. (p. 42).

We always underestimate how hard it is to be our best self in the present moment… I like to think of this battle as time traveling to defeat my future self. (p. 44).

My childhood friend Curt grew up and became a sports psychologist. He tells me that the number one predictor of whether someone will stick to an exercise routine or not is whether they are doing it with someone else. (p. 46).

The reason why this is so powerful is that when we procrastinate, we are merely breaking a promise to ourselves; we feel far worse when we break a promise to somebody else. (p. 47).

Human psychology is such that we actually fear loss more than we want a gain. So instead of rewarding yourself for goal achievement, you can also punish yourself for goal failure. One company, StickK has made a website that lets you set up a “commitment contract.” You pick the goal, the penalty, and a charity of your choice will receive your money if you don’t hit the goal. (p. 47).

SECRET #4 Procrastination can be overcome when you figure out how to beat your future self, who cannot be trusted to do the right thing.

How to Leave the Office at 5:00 – Without Guilt

Andy Grove revealed this ultimate secret in his book High Output Management. My day ends when I’m tired and ready to go home, not when I’m done. I am never done. Like a housewife’s, a manager’s work is never done. There is always more to be done, more that should be done, always more than can be done. And that is the secret. There will always be more to do, and always more than can be done. (p. 53).

So you need to master the practice of letting go of the more, since there will always be more to do. Once you master this, you’ll find it easier to get those workouts in, easier to get home to the family at a reasonable hour, and easier to spend time on yourself without feeling guilty. (p. 57).

SECRET #5 Accept the fact that there will always be more to do and more that can be done.

Richard Branson’s Secret Productivity Tool

Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis once gave an interview in which he shared his “million dollar lesson.”

Always carry a notebook. Write everything down. When you have an idea, write it down. When you meet someone new, write down everything you know about them. That way you will know how much time they are worth. When you hear something interesting, write it down. Writing it down will make you act upon it. If you don’t write it down you will forget it. THAT is a million dollar lesson they don’t teach you in business school! (p. 60).

The blog The Art of Manliness has a great article that shows pictures of the notebooks of 20 famous men including Mark Twain, George Patton, Thomas Jefferson, Charles Darwin, George Lucas, Ernest Hemingway, Ludwig van Beethoven, Ben Franklin, Thomas Edison, Leonardo da Vinci, Frank Capra, and John Rockefeller. (p. 61).

Using paper-based bound notebooks for notes is better than taking notes on a laptop, tablet, or smartphone. (p. 63).

And don’t forget, if you want to keep a digital, searchable archive of all your notes, you can always scan them into Evernote, use the Jot Script 2 Evernote stylus, or use the Livescribe notebook by Moleskine. (pp. 64-65).

SECRET #6 Always carry a notebook.

Master Your Email Inbox With 321 Zero

According to a survey conducted by the McKinsey Global Institute, office workers spend 2.6 hours per day reading and answering emails, which equates to 33 percent of a 40-hour workweek. (p. 69).

7 Steps to Mastering Your Email (p. 70).

Unsubscribe from email newsletters.
Turn off all email notifications.
Only process email three times a day, using the 321-Zero system. Schedule three times a day to process your email (morning, noon, night), set the timer on your phone for 21 minutes, and try to get to inbox zero in that time. Make a game out of it. 21 minutes is intentionally not enough time, but it will keep you focused, ensure that your responses are short, and that you don’t start clicking links out onto the wonderful world of internet distractions.
Immediately apply the 4 D’s. Every time you open an email, you should be ready to Do it, Delegate it, Defer it, or Delete (archive) it. (p. 71).
Think twice before you forward, cc, or bcc.
Use the subject line to indicate the action required.
Keep emails short – really short.

My friend Christine has over 10,000 emails in her inbox, most of them unread! Perhaps you can relate? If this is the situation you find yourself in, you might want to declare email bankruptcy and quickly start at “inbox zero” before applying the email management steps in this chapter. My suggestion is:

Deal with all email that arrived within the last 48 hours.
Create a folder called Old Emails.
Move ALL of the emails sitting in your inbox into the Old Emails folder.
Voila, you’re starting fresh at inbox zero. (pp. 74-75).

SECRET #7 Email is a great way for other people to put their priorities into your life; control your inbox.

Meeting Hacks From Google, Apple, and Virgin

Pick one day a week that you and your team can focus on getting individual work done without any interruptions like meetings. At Asana, we have No Meeting Wednesdays established to encourage flow and productivity across the company. –Dustin Moskovitz (p. 80).

Jake Knapp, design partner at Google Ventures, is an advocate for using a physical clock to count down the time remaining in a meeting… As Knapp wrote on Medium: The Time Timer is WAY better than a timer app on a screen. Because it’s physical, it’s easier to adjust and set, and absolutely impossible to ignore. (p. 81).

In 1999, a team of psychologists conducted research on the difference between sit-down and stand-up meetings across 56 different groups. As reported in the Journal of Applied Psychology: Sit-down meetings were 34 percent longer than stand-up meetings, but they produced no better decisions than stand-up meetings. (p. 82).

Richard Branson isn’t into traditional meetings either. He wrote on his blog: One of my favourite tricks is to conduct most of my meetings standing up. I find it to be a much quicker way of getting down to business, making a decision and sealing the deal. When given the opportunity I often like to take things a step further – literally, with a walking meeting.

The default length of a meeting or call—both internally and externally—should be 20 minutes; anything longer should be an exception…Even if you’re just moving from 30-minute meetings to 20-minute meetings, you can fit in 4-6 more meetings, calls, or appointments in a day. –Ryan Delk leads growth at Gumroad. (p. 84).

SECRET #8 Schedule and attend meetings as a last resort, when all other forms of communication won’t work.

One Little Word That Multiplies Success

“Focusing is about saying no.”—Steve Jobs (p. 89).

“The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say ‘no’ to almost everything.”—Warren Buffett (p. 91).

This is a lesson I even try to teach my kids: every yes is a no to something else. It’s not that they should say no to everything; it’s that they should think it through. (p. 94).

Again, the lesson isn’t to always say no. Just realize that every yes will be a no to something else when the time comes. Understanding that there is always an opportunity cost will make you hesitate and really be careful about what you are agreeing to put on your calendar. (p. 95).

SECRET #9 Say no to everything that doesn’t support your immediate goals.

The Powerful Pareto Principle

80 percent of results will come from just 20 percent of the action. This “universal truth” about the imbalance of inputs and outputs became known as the Pareto principle, or the 80/20 rule. (pp. 101-102).

If you’re running a software company, make sure you are identifying which bugs are causing 80 percent of the phone calls to your help center. Eliminate these first, and you’ll dramatically reduce your tech support costs. (p. 104).

It’s more important to have a mindset of identifying the few things and activities that will give you outsized returns. You want to:

Look for shortcuts.
Do the most important things exceptionally well, and the rest just “good enough” or not at all.
Develop your skills to be exceptional in a few targeted areas; don’t try to master everything.
Realize that you can work less, stress less, and increase your happiness by figuring out the 20 percent of goals and activities that are most important to you. (p. 108).

SECRET #10 Eighty percent of outcomes are generated by twenty percent of activities.

The “3 Havard Questions” That Save 8 Hours a Week

In September 2013, Professors Julian Birkinshaw and Jordan Cohen shared the results of their productivity experiment in the Harvard Business Review. They found that 41 percent of knowledge workers’ time is spent on discretionary activities that weren’t personally satisfying and could also be done by others. (p. 112).

So what’s the secret to these massive time savings? The researchers trained everyone to analyze their tasks to see if they could:

Drop: What items can I drop? What can I stop doing entirely?
Delegate: What items can I delegate to a subordinate? What can I outsource?
Redesign: What do I need to continue doing, but do it in a new, time-efficient way? (p. 113).

The bottom line is you should try to outsource everything you can unless:

You enjoy doing it and it’s part of your rest and recharging process.
It’s part of your values to continue doing the task.
It costs you more per hour to outsource it than you want to make yourself. (p. 122).

SECRET #11 Focus your time only on things that utilize your unique strengths and passions.

Why Twitter Co-Founder Jack Dorsey Themes His Days

Renowned entrepreneur coach Dan Sullivan suggests that we theme every week around three different kinds of days:

Focus Days: “Game days” are to focus on our most important activities, typically revenue-producing activities. These are also the days when we should ideally be using our unique talents; do what you do best.

Buffer Days: These are days to catch up on emails and calls, hold internal meetings, delegate tasks, catch up on paperwork, and complete any training or educational activities that are related to work.

Free Days: These are days without any kind of work. These are days for vacation, fun, or perhaps charity. No work-related emails, calls, or thinking should be done on these days; it’s a time to rejuvenate. (p. 126).

To gain a quantum leap in vacation quality, just schedule a buffer day before and after your vacation. Bookend your vacation with days that are time blocked for catching up. (p. 128).

SECRET #12 Batch your work with recurring themes for different days of the week.

Don’t Touch! (Until You’re Ready)

Highly successful people take immediate action on almost every item they encounter. They know that to be efficient, they want to expend the least possible amount of time and mental energy processing things. In short, they practice a “touch it once” mentality. Here’s how I now go through snail mail using the “touch it once” principle:

I walk out to the mailbox and grab the mail.
As I walk back up my driveway, I pick out all the junk mail.
I toss the junk mail into the recycle bin in my garage before I even walk back into the house.
I easily pick out the magazines and put them in my magazines-to-be-read stack on the coffee table.
I take the remaining bills—that’s all there is left, no-body sends letters anymore—and set them on my bills-to-be-paid pile next to my computer.
Because I’ve time blocked 30 minutes every Friday morning for paying bills, I don’t even bother opening those envelopes until that time. (p. 132).

SECRET #13 If a task can be completed in less than five minutes, do it immediately.

Change Your Morning, Change Your Life

Imagine if you could have a solid hour of daily “me time” that could drive higher levels of happiness, productivity, and creativity throughout the day. (p. 138).

Obviously, successful people don’t all follow the exact same routine, but it is amazing how you can easily identify consistent themes.

Most wake up early—6 a.m. or earlier.
They hydrate by drinking a lot of water.
They eat a healthy breakfast, although each has a different definition of healthy.
They exercise. Many meditate, journal, or read. (p. 141).

SECRET #14 Invest the first 60 minutes of each day in rituals that strengthen your mind, body, and spirit.

Energy Is Everything

When people talk about “time management,” what they really want is to get more stuff done with less stress. And the real secret behind this is that you need to maximize your energy. (p. 148).

Tony Schwartz, founder of The Energy Project, teaches that human beings are designed to “pulse” between expending energy and renewing energy. (p. 152).

Schwartz suggests that we need to purposely take short breaks every 90 minutes throughout the day to drink water, walk, or to eat healthy snacks. His mantra is, “Pulse and pause.”

The idea of pulsing energy is behind the increasingly popular Pomodoro Technique developed by Francesco Cirillo (and used by Leonelle, as mentioned earlier in this chapter).

With the Pomodoro method, you set a timer for 25 minutes, work on a single task with your full focus, then take a 5-minute break to get up, move around, maybe drink some water. Then repeat the cycle. (p. 153).

SECRET #15 Productivity is about energy and focus, not time.

The E-3C System: Putting It All Together

In order to help you to take immediate action, I’ve simplified the findings from all of the research into a simple system that I call E-3C. The E stands for Energy, and the three C’s are Capture, Calendar, and Concentrate. (p. 158).

20 More Time & Productivity Hacks

Always cook more than one meal at a time
Off-load your memory with your camera phone
Mute your phone and shut off all notifications
Drink a healthy protein shake for breakfast
Never watch live TV (Because of the commercials)
Don’t watch TV at all
Use your drive time wisely
Never call people without setting an appointment ahead of time (unless it’s social, of course)
Avoid busy times out in the real world if at all possible
Use dual monitors
Have a stop doing list
Remind people of the “end-time”
Hang out with productive people
Tell people around you to leave you alone
Buy birthday cards by the dozen
Pay bills electronically
Never answer a call from an unknown number
Get a business coach, mentor, or mastermind group
Release your content through multiple channels
Know that dome is better than perfect

Kit L.