This video has gone viral in the Uplift offices so we wanted to share it with you. Over the last few weeks, Uplift Recruitment has featured Ed’s advice in our own mini segment called, “Motivational Mondays”

Let me start by saying, you need to watch this video. Anytime you need to jump-start your performance or start flexing your motivational muscle, watch this clip. Ed’s got some big ideas that will 10x your performance without a huge amount of work. Don’t believe me? Go charge your phone in another room and don’t touch it until after you have done something to centre yourself and then tell me how you feel.

FYI… Ed Mylett is a millionaire entrepreneur and author of the book, “Maxed Out.” He’s been changing lives for most of his career and now offers mindset, productivity, and business advice.

Today, we’re going to breakdown Ed’s message for you and give you some tips to take his key takeaways to the next level.

1. You Control Your Time

Set the tone for your day by being in control from the morning you wake up. Instead of rolling over, grabbing your phone, and beginning your day by reacting to your Instagram feed, emails, or text messages, do something for YOU.

Whether you stretch, meditate, breathe, have a gratitude practice or walk the dog, do what you do first before you respond or react to your phone.  You are in CONTROL of how your day starts.  

When we start our day with messages, emails, or our Instagram feed we are already on the ropes.  From that moment, we set a precedent that leaves us reacting and responding all day long.  We let our phone control our day and time from the moment we wake up. Ed is all about taking control of your time and doing more than you ever imagined was possible with it.

TIP: Uplift recommends charging your phone in another room, far away from where you sleep. Remember, NO PHONE WHEN YOU WAKE UP.  Start your day with something, however small, for yourself. 

2. Run, Don’t Walk to Your Goals

How close are you to achieving your goals? How close do you think you are? Ed challenges us to realize we are closer than we think to our goals. It’s time to shorten the timeline.

How often are we only jogging towards what we truly want? It’s time to pick up the pace. We must run towards our goals like they are achievable tomorrow because they are. Stop thinking your goals are some faraway dream because then you give yourself permission to slack off and push them away. 

TIP: Use visualization to see yourself where you want to go. Be very specific. What would achieving this goal look like, smell like, feel like? Put all that info into your visualization and do it daily. Ed even liked giving himself a taste of the life he desired by going out to fancy restaurants and pretending he could do things like that every day.

3. Shrink Your Timeline

Ed says that time management is what sets top performers apart from average ones.

Stop procrastinating. You don’t have plenty of time. You don’t have all the time in the world.  Every last one of us is on the clock Every being in this world only has 24 hours per day but some are able to use a day to accomplish what others will take a lifetime. You can easily see from a quick study of top performers that some people just use their time better and more efficiently. The results are staggering.

Ed uses 3 x 6-hour “mini-days” to give himself more time. He smashes out to-dos, meetings, and still makes time for family and exercise. He also constantly checks in with himself to make sure he is moving towards his end goal… Every hour. 

By chunking down your time, you can trick yourself into thinking you have less of it. By doing this you can push yourself to strive to get things accomplished faster. 

Ask yourself if you only have 6 (or 3 or 2 or 1) hours per day to move closer to your goal, how fast would you work? What could you accomplish in that time?

TIP: Try breaking down your day into smaller segments and ticking off as many of your most important task at the beginning of each block. Check-in with yourself frequently throughout each block and quickly ask if you are taking the appropriate steps to get closer to your goals for that day, week, or your life.

4. Measure Your Performance Daily (or even hourly)

“Where performance is measured, performance improves,” Ed repeats this phrase several times to highlight its importance.

How often do compare your performance to the goals you set? We’ve talked about breaking down your goals into systems and then into habits (read our post here), but what about how you use your time? Having lofty aspirations and a grand plan for yourself is a start but you’ve really got to push yourself into constant action if you want to succeed.

Ed recommends measuring your performance more frequently to ensure you get where you want to end up. He starts with the average Joe who sets some goals on New Years and then waits 365 days to check-in. He moves on to pretty good performers who check their performance by their goals monthly, then on to the great performers who do it weekly, and then the top performers who do it daily. Finally, he talks about how he checks in on himself hourly.

He says give himself a routine 15-second check-in… “How am I performing now?” “Is how I used my last hour moving me closer to my goals?”

While hourly performance reviews may seem like overkill, Ed swears by it. We challenge you to create a system that keeps you on track. However you do it, measuring performance more often will give you a swift kick in the butt to get moving if you’re operating with big goals, lots of talk, but not a lot of action. If you’re already moving in the right direction, measuring performance will keep you track.

What do you think about Ed’s way of thinking? Do you have your own productivity hacks? Share them in the comments below!