10. Risks are inevitable

The really successful people in life know that overnight success comes after months and years of work. Productive people aren’t wasting their time trying to get out of work, or get around work, or figure out how to cheat and get to the front of the line. They just do the work.

Productive people understand that work – whatever it is, whatever it looks like – is a privilege. Work is how we accomplish things. Work is how we reach goals. Work is always required for productivity. Whether it’s the work you get paid for, the work you call a career, the work you do for the lov...

Productive people know that knowledge is power. When they’ve chosen their focus areas, and they’ve set their priorities, they start doing the research.They conduct interviews. They read studies and reports, newspapers and magazines, books and journals. They try and test. They take notes. They thi...

Productive people know that a plan is a starting point. A good plan is more like a compass than a roadmap. It’s going to point you in the right direction, but it’s not going to lay out every bridge, road, route, and obstacle you’ll encounter on the way. Productive people take just enough time to...

Productive people have learned that sometimes it’s really important to say No to making other people happy. Because what makes other people happy is often not what makes you productive.

Being a productive person does not mean being a superhero. You’re here to do your job in it, whatever that job is for you.Choose a few areas in your life that matter the most to you, and commit to doing your best at those even if that means letting go of other things.

Productive people are too busy actually doing stuff to waste time worrying about if other people think they’re cool or not.Productive people are the ones doing, changing, moving and shaking the world in ways that will change the definition of cool. Let go of your concern for the opinion of your g...

When productive people commit to a few, well-chosen areas in life, they let those areas define their priorities. Then they let the rest of life go to the non-priority side of things.But it does mean that when there’s a choice to make, between something that is high priority and something that isn...