This 1 Simple Hack Will 10x Your Productivity

Guess what it is.

It isn’t AI, a robot or securing millions in venture funding.

It’s daily exercise at a low to medium intensity for 20 minutes.

This is nothing new, but there’s a reason why most billionaires all swear by this hack, including Richard Branson, Tim Cook and Jack Dorsey

It lowers stress

Running a business is stressful.

When you’re stressed, you make bad decisions, lash out at people and become unproductive.

If you’re not productive, you’re not working smart and you end up like a hamster in a wheel. Running hard with no end in sight.

Exercise lowers stress.

It makes you calmer

I don’t know about you, but I make better decisions when I’m calm.

When we’re super stressed, we make decisions out of a ‘fight or flight’ state with adrenaline pumping through our bodies.

This might be great for keeping us alive, but it’s rarely helpful for prioritising knowledge work.

It makes you happier

Exercise have been proven a gazillion times to make you happier.

Daily exercise helps fight anxiety and depression.

As someone that’s been running businesses for 7 years, I’ve had my fair share of both.

Nothing can stave off dark thoughts and anxiety better than a good hard sweat. It can be a difficult to drag yourself into exercising if you are feeling low or stressed, but it’s often the best thing for it.

While I don’t think there’s a ‘quick fix’ or ‘cure’ for depression, exercise can certainly mitigate most of the symptoms but it takes time.

It gives you more energy

Energy = productivity

Who’s going to get more done? The positive, happy energetic person who can sit down and smash their work for the day in 8–9 hours.

Or the tired, stressed unproductive person trying to force themselves to sit at a desk for 12 hours a day mindlessly going through the motions?

Ever heard of peak performance?

It will supercharge your sales skills

Being happy and calm will supercharge your ability to sell.

Being a good sales person is about shaking off the punches.

Nothing will allow you to overcome objections, or project your enthusiasm, better than being in a good, positive and upbeat mood. Why do you think the best sales people are great with people? It’s their outlook on life.

Just spent 2 hours on a pitch and the prospect now wants to do the complete opposite? No problem, let me get that done for you right away. While others might walk away from the pitch in frustration, you see this as an opportunity to refine your pitch and go in for a second chance. You’re one step closer to what the prospect really wants.

Been messed around for weeks over a small deal and now they aren’t interested? Oh well screw it, plenty more in the pipeline. Leave the door open and move on.

Success breeds success. And the ability to shake off negativity and carry forward positivity will help you sell better than anything else in this world.

You don’t need to do a lot

The University of Georgia ran a study and concluded that there is no noticeable difference between the health benefits associated with light exercise, compared to moderate exercise.

As someone who has experimented with his own exercise schedule for 7 years, I would have to say that I agree.

All that’s necessary is 20 minutes of light intensity cardiovascular exercise, just enough to get a sweat on. The trick is to do enough to get your sweat on, but not enough to fatigue your body. Because then you fall into the bad habit of having long recovery periods, and you can’t reap the rewards of exercise every day.

This brings us back to tribal times and makes our tribal brain happy, it’s basically telling our bodies that we’ve either run for our food, or successfully run to escape a predator or attack.

But, excuses

There’s no excuse for not being able to fit in 20 minutes exercise.

Here are some simple, cheap solutions you can look at like:

• Swimming
• Running
• Boxing
• Skipping
• Crossfit

If you are time or cash strapped buy a cheap treadmill or exercise bike.

I like to swim at least once a week. But because I don’t live near a pool at the moment, it’s time intensive which I found was resulting in me not exercising as much.

So, I bought a cheap exercise bike online and cycle for 25 minutes every day. It’s so incredibly easy to just throw on some shorts and a t-shirt and work out, that I’ve made it too easy to fail at keeping up the habit.

Habits take time

When I decided I was going to exercise for 20 minutes every day, I failed so many times at making the habit stick I lost count.

I’m not going to lie to you and pretend I picked it up overnight. I didn’t.

I got depressed I couldn’t make it stick, tried different things, abandoned it and came back to it dozens of times.

It took me the better part of several years to really make it stick. Throughout that time I’d try swimming, running, boxing. I’d try every day, when that failed I’d do 2–3 or 4 times a week.

My advice if you want to pick up daily exercise is, make it as easy as possible. Remove all possible friction.

If you’re struggling to make it stick, look at your process.

Do you have to get in your car and drive somewhere? That could be what’s holding you back. Seriously, friction creates resistance in our mind which drives that “Uhhh I can’t be bothered I’ll do it tomorrow” feeling.

Start small and measure your progress.

Try and try and try again

My final bit of advice would be, keep trying.

Don’t beat yourself up if you fail at making it stick. You’ll make a habit stick much quicker if you aren’t negative when you fail, but view it as a positive.

“Ah well, try again tomorrow” is much more likely to succeed than “I can’t believe I failed again, I’m useless”.

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