1. The 5-Minute Rule
Elon Musk divides most of his tasks during the day into 5-minute blocks, or what he calls "time boxes". The Tesla and SpaceX CEO replies to a few important emails within 5 minutes, packs or eats a meal within 5 minutes, and does quick catch-ups with his team for 5 minutes. Elon Musk's strategy is practically based on the productivity principle of Parkinson's Law, which states that work expands to fill the time available for it's completion. This means that if you only give yourself 10 minutes to finish a one-hour task, you will have finished that task within 10 minutes regardless, because you will be forced to skip the unnecessary parts and focus on the essential stuff only.
2. The 8-Hour Sleep
Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and Blue Origin, sleeps at ten o'clock in the evening, and wakes up at six in the morning with the objective of always getting 8 hours of sleep every night. Bezos said that he doesn't go to work until 10 o'clock and spends his morning having breakfast with his family, reading the newspaper, and just puttering about doing a variety of things. Bezos mentioned that his role at Amazon was making two to three critically high-quality decisions everyday, which is why he needs to have a sufficient amount of sleep and good energy to make those decisions before 5 o'clock in the afternoon. Also, Bezos believes in work-life harmony or work-life balance, and that we all should be equally happy at work and at home.
3. Read, Read, Read
Microsoft founder Bill Gates, finishes at least 50 books per year and also reads The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Economist every single morning. Gates ploughed through the hefty World Book Encyclopaedia as a kid, and has been quite famous at school for memorizing a huge chunk of it's content. Due to his reading obsession as a kid, Gates' parents set a no-reading-rule at the dining table to make young Bill stop reading during meal times. Bill Gates' has an IQ of 160, the maximum IQ score that anybody can achieve by using the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, which puts him in the category of genius, along with Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking.
4. Move Fast and Break Things
Facebook Owner and CEO Mark Zuckerberg believes in the motto "Move Fast and Break Things" and tells his employees that unless they are breaking things, they're not moving fast enough. Zuckerberg launched Facebook from his Harvard dorm-room in 2004 which has now grown into a $1 Trillion-dollar company as of early 2021. At 19 years old, Zuckerberg had a fail faster kind of mentality, which meant that if he wanted to do something, he would do it really fast so he can fail faster as well, and therefore can correct the damage done more quickly. In the foundation years of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg and his co-programmer Dustin Moskovitz took turns in doing ridiculous numbers of coding hours, to be able to expand the company to other universities, and eventually to the world.
5. Chase Million-dollar Ideas
Back in the 90s, a 22-year old Larry Page, co-founder of Google, was struck in the middle of the night with an algorithm in mind to create the most powerful web search engine the world has ever known - Google. Page said that when a really great idea shows up, write it down straight away and act on it relentlessly. Larry Page and his friend Sergey Brin initially solicited funds from their friends and family to buy a few servers and rent a garage in Menlo Park, California, but later on got a $100,000 cheque from Sun Microsystems co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim to help them jump-start their company. Page said that since the idea of creating Google came to him, he hasn't stopped in his pursuit to make it happen.
6. Walk and Think
Instead of sitting at a desk, Apple Founder Steve Jobs managed to get the best ideas of his life, through his long walks. Jobs was known to walk to many of his meetings, and has always preached that his most creative ideas came when on foot, rather than when in the office. Steve Jobs, along with his best friend Steve Wozniak, often called Woz, founded the now $2 trillion dollar-worth company Apple, from Steve's bedroom in April 1976. According to one Stanford University study, walking boosts our mind's creative output by 60 percent because of the simultaneous use of multiple parts of the brain when doing the said activity.
7. Stay Frugal
Warren Buffet, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway and widely considered as the most successful investor of the 20th century, has never spent more than $3 for every breakfast that he's had in the last 54 years. Despite having a massive net worth of 103.7 billion dollars as of today, Buffet has also only lived at the same house he bought for $31,500 in Omaha Nebraska, in 1958. The billionaire also buys reduced-price cars instead of driving around in million-dollar vehicles, and has told the media that the way he gets cheap vehicles is by looking for cars that have been damaged by hail. When Buffet and Bill Gates travelled together to Hong Kong, Buffet offered to pay for their McDonald's meal. According to Gates, Warren dug into his pocket and pulled out a lot of coupons which was extremely hilarious! This proves that despite being a billionaire, Warren Buffet is a very mindful money spender, with an objective of always getting the cheapest, if not the best price out of anything.
8. Failure is the Path to Success
Michael Jordan, widely considered as the greatest basketball player in the history of the game, has always believed that failure is the natural path to success. Air Jordan, who won 6 NBA championships with Chicago Bulls and won the NBA Finals MVP every single time, was a big failure when he was only starting basketball in his high school years. Jordan was cut out from the varsity basketball team because he wasn't good and tall enough, but has worked hard to prove his worth when he became the star of Laney's junior varsity team which tallied several 40-point games. Jordan got famous for his athletic leaping ability, highlighted in his back-to-back Slam Dunk Contest championships in 1987, and has ultimately become very successful since then. Michael Jordan is famously known for this quote: "I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed".
9. Take Control of Your Life
Oprah Winfrey wanted control over media representations of her character, her appearance and her life story. The 2.5 billion-dollar net worth celebrity had the irrepressible will to become rich and famous from a very young age, and constantly reinvented herself until she landed on Forbe's list of most influential people. Oprah did everything in her power to control her image, such as regularly dictating to photographers which pictures they could use for media outlets. The Harpo Productions CEO has become one of the richest self-made woman in America, mainly because of the drive and ambition to become famous at a very early age.
10. Daily Themes
Jack Dorsey, founder and CEO of Twitter, believes in the use of Daily Themes as a secret to unmatched powerful productivity. Dorsey says that on Mondays, he focuses on management and running the company, and on Tuesdays he focuses on the product. Wednesday is focused on marketing, communications and growth, and Thursday is for developers and partnerships. Friday is focused on culture and recruiting, and the weekends are focused on hiking, relaxing, reflection, feedback and strategy. By deciding on certain themes for the days of the week, you can focus on each of the sections in your work-life and tackle them with intense focus and deep work.
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