I have a great self-help book called How to Save an Hour Every Day. It has lots of little productivity tips and a ton of great advice, but there’s one amusing irony - reading the book itself takes a few hours meaning that a simple way to save time would be to skip reading it entirely.
The same can be said for many self-help books, and useful though many of them are, they do tend to be a bit self-indulgent and ramble on. What makes this dangerous is that many people seem to be under the illusion that reading them is the same as actually improving themselves.
It’s not: if you really want to improve yourself then it’s no good to just read self-improvement - you need to live it. Thus, to help you benefit from the lessons in those self-help books that apply directly to productivity for bloggers, while saving you the time spent actually reading them, I have assembled some of the best lessons from a number of such books here for your convenience.
The essence of these ideas can often be summarized in a few lines, so rather than spend hours reading about self-help without making any concrete changes, try taking these messages on board and implementing them now. Your productivity will benefit, and so too will your blog.
How to Save an Hour Every Day by Michael Heppell
Starting with the book that inspired this article, a great way to save an hour every day is to be more efficient and that means avoiding distracting tasks. You might not realise it, but little things like making a cup of tea take you right out of your flow and really slow down your work.
Rather than doing this at the start of your working day then, Heppell recommends seeing each little task as a reward. Anything that varies from your work is a ‘reward’ that you get for doing an hour’s work.
Instead of sitting down, making tea, checking your e-mail then looking over Facebook before you start working then, you’ll now work for an hour, make tea, work for an hour, check Facebook, work for an hour and check your e-mail. Rather than procrastinating for an hour before you even begin you’ll have three hours of work under your belt by the time you’re looking at e-mail.
The Start-Up of You by Reid Hoffman
Reid Hoffman was the founder of LinkedIn which makes him worth listening to. A great piece of advice he gives in this book is to think of the five people you’d reach out to if you were out of work - if your blog suffered a major hit in the SERPs or if your day job fired you.
Instead of waiting until that point though, he suggests reaching out to them now before you want anything so that the groundwork is set ready for when you do get in touch and need something.
The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg
There are a few good tips in this tome on making your habits work for you, but my favourite was the most simple (often the simple ones are the best): just start making your bed every morning when you get up.
You’ll find that sticking to one easy positive habit means more are likely to follow (and having tested the theory I can attest to this being the case).
59 Seconds: Think a Little, Change a Lot by Richard Wiseman
Wiseman’s tips are designed to be quick and easy to implement which makes them a perfect fit for this article. One of the most interesting is based around something called the ‘Zeigarnik effect’.
Basically, once we have started something we feel a powerful urge to see it through to completion, even if we weren’t previously particularly motivated to work on it.
This can again be used to help with our productivity if we just commit to doing two minutes’ worth of work at the start of the day. Once we’ve done that we’ll feel a pull to complete our task until it’s finally done.
The Personal MBA By Josh Kaufman
While this book is mostly about business, there are some sage productivity tips in there too. One example explains how we accept our situation based on our ‘reference levels’ - if we are basically comfortable and happy and our life is comparable to others’ around us, then we won’t strive too much to change things because we’re naturally inclined to conserve energy.
On the other hand though, if we were to spend more time in the presence of highly successful bloggers, or reading the blogs of people we admire then our reference level would be set higher and we’d be willing to expend more energy on trying to match that. Live the life you want, and you’ll start working to catch up…
Ben Austin is founder and managing director of UK based SEO agency SEO Positive Limited, an innovative search engine optimization company based in UK.
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Hi, Jane. Got the much needed motivation from your post today. Most people stay in the theory part after reading a self improvement book. We get the desired results only when implementing them. You mentioned some great books. I am going to read how to save an our everyday.
Thanks a lot, Ben, for this wonderful post. I love ‘Think and grow rich’ by Napolean Hill.
I do like Think and Grow Rich and the $100 startup
thanks for sharing
cheers
I regularly read some inspirational and productivity lessons books whenever I got some time. The Start-Up of You by Reid Hoffman is one of the book that made me able to organize my things better with the great tips.
Many thanks for the useful books. I will try to start reading them. But actually, like you said there is much better just to live it. The live experience is better than anything.
This is really wonderful lesson to learn for Blogging. I like this “The Personal MBA By Josh Kaufman” it is really perfect that A personal MBA really help a lot.
Hi jane,
It is really great and useful article. Thanks for this honest review about SEO in lesson to learn for Blogging.
This is really helpful, one of my friend has this software.
thanks for share with me!!
great Post and motivative article,,,and thanks for these book they seems very useful books and very ful ,i definetly read them
The resources mentioned in this article are really motivating .Thanks for the list.
You’re welcome Phanindra.
Hey Ben,
That`s an awesome post. I do agree with you that small things like making a cup of tea and checking mail & FB will decrease our work quality. I faced this problem.
The way discussed by Michael in his book is awesome.
Reid Hoffman tips are new to me I never practice this. Rather I leave behind things, which I think should change.
I completely agree with Charles on starting simple things to start first.
Richard`s 59 sec is looks awesome, thinking little can really help us to increase productivity.
And I hope personal MBA has complete things needed for a business person.
Ben I think all of these books are awesome!
Cant` buy them all now, anyway will try it some other time.
~@khajamoin1
I like the concept of this post.Quick easily retrievable information.And like you said one has to live the book to get the results.Cheers
I have read couple of self help books such as think and grow rich and monk who sold his Ferrari but never tried any of these. Will have to pick these up ASAP to psyche me up some more.
Thanks for the share
thanks.
I like the concept of this post.Quick easily retrievable information.And like you said one has to live the book to get the results
I can only remember one or two things from books like these anyway, so this is perfect. Of course, I’ll only remember one or two things from this article. I think I’ll take “Fruit will make you fat” and “if it can be done in two minutes, do it.” Those sound good. But I like the weird “clap when you meet someone” thing too — with a little work, maybe I can be known throughout my neighborhood as “that guy with the clap”
Hi Ben,
I think the books you mentioned will certainly build one’s confidence & inspire him to do better work.
Thanks for awesome post
Nice too see some real time examples taken from books. Feeling inspired to read all these books to be productive, thank you.
Let me add another tips applicable for most of self-help books. You have rightly pointed out mere reading is altogether different than improving yourself in reality. So best thing to do is to - you keep doing/practicing what is written in the book as you continue to read it. Don’t try to read thru the book fast and think about actually doing it later. It may take few months to completely read the book but it will be far more worthwhile in the end.
Hi Jane,
These books I think you mentioned will certainly build confidence & really inspire him to do better work. It is really useful!!
Thanks for share with me!!
Hi,
That`s an awesome post. I do agree with you that small things like making a cup of tea and checking mail & FB will decrease our work quality. I faced this problem.
This is a great article for people seeking help in making something with their lives. The books you mentioned contain a lot of good advice regarding this topic. I’ll make sure I include them on my reading list. Thanks.
Thanks for the post Ben.
The first point about saving an hour a day really hit home. I’m very active on social media sites and find myself checking them quite often. A lot of my business does come from social media so I wouldn’t say its time wasted but I’m going to use this tip and see how much extra work I can fit in.