Insane Productivity by Darren Hardy Review

Listed here are my notes on Darren Hardy's seminar called Insane Productivity.  Darren Hardy is really a speaker, author and publisher of Success Magazine.  This presentation was given at a TransAmerica 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 surely got to interview people like Richard Branson, Donald Trump, Tony Hawk, Steve Jobs, Harrison Ford, Warren Buffet and Bill Gates.  You will find 4 kinds of people in the event that 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's the Unengaged, Low Results-High Effort could be the Over Motivated Underachiever, High Results-High Effort could be the Over Whelmed Overachiever and High Results-Low Effort could be the Super Achiever.  Distractions are what is in how to be a Super Achiever.  Especially in modern times the main thing you need to know is to regulate your attention.  We have to be able to scale our skills at the exact same rate that individuals are scaling progress within our society.  We have to learn to weed out unneeded solicitations on our time.  It's not what Super Achiever's do that makes them successful.  It's what they don't really do.  You have to master saying “no”. Warren Buffet is quoted as saying, “For each and every 100 great opportunities that are brought in my experience, I say no 99 times” ggmoneyonline.  Steve Jobs said, “Deciding what not to accomplish can be as important as deciding things to do”.  It doesn't help to accomplish something efficiently that individuals should not need been doing at all.  We have to be great at a few things as opposed to average at many. We have to “give up” on certain things to make room for time for you to be great at a few 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. You will find vital few functions, vital few priorities, vital few metrics and vital few improvements. The vital few functions are those items that matter probably the most for the career.  There might be activities which have a lot of steps but only a few of these steps are vital that need your specific great skill.  Leave the others to the team to complete.  Concentrate on things that make the money.  In real-estate he focused on 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 own time on that and either delegate or discontinue the rest.  What is usually the one activity that you do well that most impacts your success.  A function can be an activity that you've do.  A priority are the over-arching goal.  Concentrate on no more than 3 strategic priorities.  We're distracted once every 3 minutes but it takes us 11 minutes to return to a situation of concentration.  There's no true multi-tasking. What you are actually doing is switching back and forth from multiple tasks.  This has actually be demonstrated to lower your intelligence.  Don't mistake activity for productivity.  You can't be Concentra tingly productive for more than 90 minutes at a time.  You have to isolate yourself from distractions, you need to employ a countdown clock and you then have to recover.  The vital metrics are the 3 goals you need to attain to perform your objective.  Only give attention to those 3 goals.  What are the 2 or 3 things needed to perform those goals?  Then track those tasks on an everyday basis.  We have to set our “Personal Development Set Point” higher.  That is our standard for things such as health, money, and relationships.  For things to change and improve you should change and improve.  Learn less and study more. What is your #1 goal and what is the #1 skill necessary to achieve 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 mp3 audiobooks for 30 minutes.  Of each dollar your make use 10% to greatly help others and 10% to greatly help yourself.  You have to fail to succeed.  You can't hesitate of failure. Note, I'm not sure what the 2nd “5” is in the formula.

Hardy is a superb speaker.  He provides you with the data that he promises.  Many speakers just give you one teaser after another to keep you listening but there is never any payoff.  Hardy provides you with the data that he promises in a regular manner with a mode that's light and engaging.  He provides personal stories but he doesn't drag them on or get side-tracked.  I would suggest him for seminars and speaking engagements.