3 Micro Habits of Extremely Smart and Productive People
Especially if you’re chaotic and loud
The majority of people aren’t smart. They’re just average.
Modern-day society focuses on efficiency. It’s called productivity — that sounds more fun, but it’s the same. If you’re productive, someone or something will be efficiently dealt with.
If you have a corporate job, your employer wants you to work as efficiently as possible. Then you’re the most productive, which means it generates a lot of revenue.
It’s also relevant in schools and education in general. We are taught to use the most productive techniques to learn something or to organize our plans throughout a semester to get project assignments finished on time.
Being productive often is associated with doing as much work as possible in the shortest amount of time possible. You can create a formula out of that. But what productivity really means is that you use your brains to generate as much of something, which could be money, could be ideas, in the shortest amount of time with the least amount of effort possible.
Here are 3 micro habits of extremely smart and productive people that you could use right now.
Create a productivity system for yourself
Most people adapt systems from other people. Stop doing that. It’s forcing you to work like other people. Habits like these need to develop more organically. Lots of productivity systems that are out there will cost you more time than they will save you.
Nowadays, there are a lot of digital systems to use. Most of the time to plan my life, I use Notion. One of the best workspace software out there.
For a couple of months, I am using it to organize my finances, plan my traveling, schedule my writing, and much more that would require you multiple notebooks and agendas without digital software.
You could make it a habit to track the things you did on a day and reflect on your goals. Setting goals on paper or on a to-do list makes it more real and your brain wants to tick them off. Seeing one thing left behind on your to-do list won’t feel good and you want to finish them all.
It almost feels competitive when you’re tracking your habits. The notion is perfect for this. Keep track of all your daily habits and the work you got done on a day. After a couple of weeks, you will see the results and be proud of yourself.
Stop being the loud one, start listening
As an introvert, this is second nature to me. But most people aren’t introverted. They’re loud and don’t listen to the ones that got something interesting to say. If you do, keep going, you’re doing a great job. But if you don’t, pay attention.
Once you start listening, not just hearing, really listening, you will notice things you didn’t notice before. There are so many people out there that have amazing experiences and stories to tell that you could learn from. Stop talking about yourself and ask about them, listen and reflect.
You will never hear the smartest guy or girl in the room. He or she will be quiet and listens to what other people have to tell. Especially in board meetings where those who yell the loudest will make the decision are suffering from these people.
Whenever I am in a meeting I try to listen as much as possible. Then I would consider my words carefully and assess if it’s a correct note that I am about to throw into the meeting. Usually, it turns out to be the case. You can do that too by practicing with the people around you.
Reduce your thoughts
Thoughts are energy. The more you think, the more energy it will cost. You shouldn’t just be efficient in your work but also in your thinking process. Take as few paths as possible to reduce the amount of thinking. Be lazy.
If you’re really lazy, you know how to figure things out by doing the least work. That’s real productivity. Use that lazy habit to get to your goal. Bill Gates used to hire the laziest people he could find because they would solve something using the easiest method — which saved the company money.
In mathematics, there is something called a graph, with nodes. How many steps does it take to get from A to B? Some paths weigh heavier than others — just like in the real world. Consider your shortest path that weighs the least to reduce the amount of thinking you have to do.
Just remember that smart people don’t want to do a lot of work. They want to get to a solution as fast and efficiently as possible.