There’s a thief lurking in the shadows of your mind.

He’ll never break into your home or rob you at gunpoint. He just waits for you to invite him in. He stands beside you in broad daylight, quietly siphoning away your motivation, creativity, and drive. 

His favorite mark? Entrepreneurs who take destiny into their own hands.

He targets people with enough talent to drive progress by the sheer power of their will. Anyone smart enough to have multiple options for building an empire, creating from scratch, or blazing new trails one step at a time.

Your enemy is uncertainty. He is the thief in the night. The killer of dreams. The kryptonite that drains your powers of productivity.

A Sudden Burst of Productivity

Have you ever experienced a burst of productivity and effortless focus? Did you ride the wave of creative synthesis, sidestepping hurdles at breakneck speeds?

For a moment, you held in your hands the two active ingredients of peak productivity. Clear goals...

Much of what you accomplish in this life depends on your beliefs about who you are and what you are capable of.

So, it makes sense that many of my clients practice affirmations.

They want to adopt beliefs that support the grand vision they hold for their lives and businesses. They want to instill a sense of possibility, strength, and certainty deep within the mind’s subconscious operating system.

So they use affirmations.

It’s a common practice stemming from a self-help industry that is propelled forward by ideas that sell, even if those ideas have no scientific merit or practical utility.

I’d like to show you something better. Something that actually has the power to change your life.

It’s an alternative to practicing positive affirmations for those who want to test the limits of what’s possible, and for those who enjoy the thrill of truly striving for uncommon results.

The Problem with Affirmations

Affirmations represent an attempt to change your...

“Inbox Zero” is a concept that effectively triages your inbox so you can achieve better productivity.

No more “675 unread emails” for you! Here’s how it works:

Get my list of email tools to improve productivity here.

What is Inbox Zero?

“Inbox Zero” is a term that was coined by productivity evangelist, Merlin Mann, who gave a popular Google Tech Talk on the subject in 2007. Since then, there have been several different methodologies proposed for achieving Inbox Zero, so you can choose the method you prefer.

What is Inbox Zero? It’s a system for organizing and filing email messages quickly. You label and triage emails so that you reach and maintain the coveted status of an empty inbox every day.

It’s important to note here that Mann’s premise isn’t to fanatically keep your inbox at zero, but the term refers to the amount of time an employee’s brain is in their inbox. 

From Mann’s original...

Who influences your productivity “set point?”

Here’s what I’ve noticed. The company you keep is a good predictor of how productive you are.

Let’s explore:

1. How your peers influence you and…
2. How to harness that influence for good:

If you’re in a hurry, grab my list of hand-picked resources that can upgrade your productivity through the exposure-effect.

How do your peers influence your productivity?

Let’s begin with a quick story. Holly was a skilled developer who was hired into her dream job - working for a well-known Silicon Valley company.

She quickly immersed herself in the busy work environment and was impressed with how the team pulled together to efficiently tackle projects. Everyone was dedicated to their work.

Seeing this, Holly worked harder. She was chosen for some key projects and found that as her reputation grew, she was offered more challenging projects.

She described how this group thrived on both teamwork and...

There’s one secret shared by the most successful entrepreneurs I’ve met.

• It’s the secret that allows them to scale a business infinitely.
• It’s the secret to producing results for their customers.
• And it’s the secret to increasing profit even when it seems there’s no room for growth.

Here’s what the most successful entrepreneurs do differently… 

They repeatedly identify and remove bottlenecks. They focus 90% of their attention on just two things:

1. Gathering data to discover where the bottlenecks are in their operations, and
2. Designing creative solutions to remove those bottlenecks.

As a productivity coach, this was a rather embarrassing lesson for me to learn. Because I thought I was the solution to their productivity goals.

I thought if I could just get the business owner to be more productive with their own time, everything else would fall into place. They would be so overjoyed with my services that they would recommend me to...

They say stress is the constant affliction of the hurried.

I believe that, because I’ve experienced it myself. And I hate feeling stressed.

But in this article I’m going to show you how to work faster without increasing your stress.

Upon closer examination, I’ve realized that hurrying itself is not the problem. In fact, I enjoy working at a fast pace. I like breaking speed limits to get more done in less time.

So that raises the question, if hurrying is not the cause of stress, then what is?

Well, here’s what I’ve noticed.

Stress is actually caused by the prospect of not finishing something on time. It’s the natural response to the perception that there is a potential failure looming in your future.

It’s the feeling that something matters to you but you don’t have enough control to guarantee it’ll turn out the way you want.

The more you care about something, the more it stresses you out when you are behind schedule.

And if one...