5 Life Hacks You Aren’t Doing for More Productivity

Life hacks are simple yet small tips to improve the quality of your life.

A life hack that doesn’t become a routine will never build into a habit, and yet, that’s exactly what we need to be more productive.

Take or leave ’em, here are my five life hacks you need for more productivity.

1. You don’t have a quick first step

If you want to succeed on a basketball court, start with how slowly you train for speed.

A quick, fearless first step is one of the most important skills to have in pro sports. And since I love basketball, I learned you must constantly train your first step for speed. The routine of doing weekly plyos, strength training, sprints, hills, and sand workouts gave me an advantage against whoever was defending me.

You get by people easier and do more with less effort.

It’s the same in life—training a fearless quick first step is crucial to having advantages in whatever arena you choose to play in.

2. You don’t start small and act fast.

If you can train yourself to move fearlessly fast (and first), you’ll have the advantage over people who don’t live that way.

In startups, a quick first step with your minimum viable product means you’ll be the first to market and get crucial feedback on pivoting your product, service, or skills to bring more value.

In relationships, you’ll ask out the hot bombshell lady (or guy) at the bar first, before someone does, and maybe meet someone great.

In careers, you’ll get more done, take initiative, and it will pay off in raises down the road.

3. You don’t train your brain for implementation

To get fast, you need routines that make you faster.

James Clear says on the science of habits, “You are 2x to 3x more likely to follow through with a habit if you make a specific plan for when, where, and how you are going to implement it. This is known as an implementation intention.”

Knowing when, where, and how is your X, Y, and Z success formula for implementation. Your brain and body need a consistent framework and conscious intention to build routines that create habits for taking quicker first steps in life.

You won’t build good habits if you have bad X, Y, and Z routines.

Routines create momentum for incremental progress into habit land.

4. You don’t do less

Taking the first step towards unknown routines is always the hardest thing to do.

And we usually mess this process up by trying to change our entire lives all at once instead of picking one routine to focus on.

Step one: pick one thing or routine to plug into your X, Y, and Z formula.
Step two: do the routine at the same time and same place every day.
Step three: do it again tomorrow for the next 30–90 days.
Step four: put the habit on cruise control and then pick the next singular thing.

If you do this enough over time, you’ll eventually be life-hacking toward becoming a productivity wizard.

Or you can try the XYZ with anything that makes you more productive:

meditate at 12:00 pm in your office on your couch
do yoga for 30 minutes at 5:00 pm at your local yoga studio
walk for 10 minutes after coffee at 8:00 am
call your smartest friend or business mentor after the lunch break every day
read a book at 10:00 pm about focus and willpower or why mental resilience matters

Routines can look and feel different in life, but the most important thing is training your brain on how to keep doing it.

This is why habits help, they’re autonomous first steps toward action. And nothing is accomplished without action.

5. You don’t do hard

Habits are hard because there will be roadblocks to consistent progress.

Routines are hard because you need to be intentional about why you need that routine in your life in the first place.

First steps are scary because you have to be okay with feeling foolish, failing, or missing the lowest-hanging fruit branch for creating change.

If I told you to get 1,500 jumping jacks done today, you’d probably spit in my face.

But if I said, “do 50 jumping jacks upon waking up every morning,” you’d get 1,500 done easily.

Good luck out there,

Trevor Huffman

Hi, I’m Trevor. A former pro athlete writing on personal growth, wisdom, and wealth.
Hi, I’m Trevor. A former pro athlete writing on personal growth, wisdom, and wealth. Join Medium.com and start earning…
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