What was the best advice you ever received on being productive?

原文地址：https://www.quora.com/What-was-the-best-advice-you-ever-received-on-being-productive/answer/Max-Lukominskyi-1

A couple of years ago I received an advice from a person who I have always considered to be highly productive. That advice astonished me. It seemed both counterintuitive and weird. Nonetheless, with time, I realized its true value.

The best advice I have ever received on being productive isDo Less.

Very often productivity is associated with hard work. The more you work, the more tasks you get done. The harder you work, the better quality you produce. In fact, it is rarely true.

Work harder, get up earlier, stay up later—those have been considered to be prerequisites of better results and incredible productivity for a long time. In reality, these advice very often appear to be completely misleading.

Embrace the truth: Work is never done. It consists of tons of tiny things that constantly pile up and never finish. Eventually, you barely notice how work burns your time. The more you feed that monster the hungrier it gets.

Meanwhile, the secret of high productivity lies in the firm focus, concentration and proper execution of the tasks that matter most.

Do Less is not about allowing for laziness, procrastination and adding a few more hours of spare time.

In fact, Do Less is about working smarter instead of working harder and cultivating the habits that are a perfect fit for the goals you set and the level of productivity you would like to achieve.

Overall,Do Lessis all about:

Saying NO to things that do not add value.

Avoiding multitasking.

Focusing on the tasks that add value.

Avoiding unnecessary busyness.

Not over-committing.

Running a marathon, not a sprint.

Not sacrificing your rest.

Being MVP of your team and the most productive guy in the room does not require to have an endless list of tasks and lots of commitments. It does not require overworking either.

To be highly productive you have to organize you work in such a way that you are producing more while doing less.

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