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Insane Productivity by Darren Hardy Review

Guidelines my notes on Darren Hardy's seminar called Insane Productivity.  Darren Hardy is just a speaker, author and publisher of Success Magazine.  This presentation was given at a Trans America conference.

In the 1930's Andrew Carnage commissioned Napoleon Hill to interview people like Henry Ford, Charles Schwab, King Gillette, Woodrow Wilson, William Taft, Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, William Wrigley, John D Rockefeller, and Harvey Firestone.  Hill became the publisher of Success magazine.  In 2007 Darren Hardy became the publisher of Success and got to interview people like Richard Branson, Donald Trump, Tony Hawk, Steve Jobs, Harrison Ford, Warren Buffet and Bill Gates. There are 4 kinds of people if you made 4 boxes with the vertical axis being Results and the Horizontal being Time and Effort you would get:  Low Results-Low Effort that is the Unengaged, Low Results-High Effort is the Over Motivated Underachiever, High Results-High Effort is the Over Whelmed Overachiever and High Results-Low Effort is the Super Achiever.  Distractions are what's in the manner to be a Super Achiever.  Especially in modern times the number one thing you have to know is to control your attention. We must be able to scale our skills at the exact same rate that people are scaling progress within our society. We must learn how to weed out unneeded solicitations on our time.  It's not what Super Achiever's do which makes them successful course. It is what they do not do.  You've to understand saying “no”.  Warren Buffet is quoted as saying, “For every single 100 great opportunities that are brought to me, I say no 99 times”.   Steve Jobs said, “Deciding what not to complete is as important as deciding things to do”.  It doesn't help to complete something efficiently that people should not have been doing at all.  We must be great at two things instead of average at many. We must “give up” on certain things to create room for time for you to be great at a couple of things. Some items on Hardy's “give up” list were television, news, watching sports, music, body building, and mechanics.  Take that time for you to master the skills you want.  There are vital few functions, vital few priorities, vital few metrics and vital few improvements. The vital few functions are those issues that matter the absolute most for your career. There may be activities which have lots of steps but only a few of those steps are vital that need your specific great skill.  Leave the others to the team to complete.  Give attention to the things that make the money.  In real estate he dedicated to prospecting and negotiating the sale though there are many steps that are needed included in the process.  Find out what your 3 vital functions are and spend 90% of your time on that and either delegate or discontinue the rest.  What's the one activity that you prosper that most impacts your success.  A function can be an activity that you have do.  A priority are the over-arching goal.  Give attention to only 3 strategic priorities.  We are distracted once every 3 minutes but it takes us 11 minutes to return to circumstances of concentration. There is no true multi-tasking.  What you are very doing is switching back and forth from multiple tasks. This has actually be shown to decrease your intelligence.  Don't mistake activity for productivity.  You can't be Concentra tingly productive for significantly more than 90 minutes at a time.  You've to isolate yourself from distractions, you will need to employ a countdown clock and then you have to recover. The vital metrics are the 3 goals you will need to attain to perform your objective.  Only focus on those 3 goals.  What are the 2 or 3 things needed to perform those goals?  Then track those tasks on a regular basis.  We must set our “Personal Development Set Point” higher.  This is our standard for things such as health, money, and relationships.  For things to change and improve you have to change and improve.  Learn less and study more. What's your #1 goal and what's the #1 skill necessary to attain that goal?  Once a fraction he focuses on that skill by reading 5 books, listening to 3 CDs or DVDs and attending 1 seminar.  Every morning he reads for 30 minutes and while his driving, walking or exercising he listens to audio books for 30 minutes.  Of every dollar your make use 10% to simply help others and 10% to simply help yourself.  You've to fail to succeed. You can't be afraid of failure. Note, I am uncertain what the 2nd “5” is in the formula.

Hardy is a great speaker.  He gives you the information that he promises.  Many speakers just offer you one teaser after another to stop you listening but there is never any payoff.  Hardy gives you the information that he promises in a regular manner with a method that is light and engaging.  He provides personal stories but he doesn't drag them on or get side-tracked.  I would recommend him for seminars and speaking engagements.

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