Daily habits of productive leaders: start small

With the corporate market turning towards recession, it’s more important now than ever to aim to be as efficient and effective as possible. When time is money, and money is tight, time becomes a precious commodity – one you can’t afford to waste.

At Selligence, we understand all about the importance of improved efficiency and productivity. In fact, it’s one of the key deliverables of our products. Here, we’ve stretched beyond our own platforms to identify which habits you should be incorporating into your daily routine to make sure you’re living your most optimised life.

It will come as no surprise that business and industry leaders have their own daily routines that they attribute to being behind their success. So how do we become the best, most efficient and productive version of ourselves? We’ve analysed the daily habits of those at the very top of their game to find new opportunities for you.

Start small

Perhaps making the smallest changes can be the easiest way to broach a big lifestyle and work revolution, but they’re often the most overlooked changes too. These tiny, seemingly inconsequential habits can have a huge impact on the rest of your day, specifically in your mental attitude and approach to work.  

So, start small and focus on easy-to-implement changes you can build into your daily routine.

Get up early

People that get up early (the elusive ‘morning people’) are often touted as being energetic problem solvers, the leaders of departments, businesses, and maybe even countries. But the early bird really does get the worm.  

Many studies have explored the benefits of getting up early and if you’re keen to improve your organisation, energy levels, stress management, and general happiness, then you’ll be pleased to know that becoming an early riser can help you with these things.  

By taking a proactive approach and setting a new alarm time, you’ll be able to start developing a more structured sleep routine. It’s perhaps no surprise to you that those who are early risers are often also early to bed – and they’re the winners getting a routine 7-9 hours’ sleep and avoiding that post-lunch lull.  

Now you’ve wrapped your head around the idea of an earlier start, it is important that you use the time you’ve just clawed into your morning to your benefit. Use this time to help get things squared away, mentally, before the day ahead.

Meditate

So, you’ve gained an extra hour (or two) in the morning thanks to that new early-bird alarm. But what to do with the time while the rest of the world/household continues sleeping? These extra hours are precious. These are the hours that will shape the rest of your day, so use them wisely.  

Meditation is not the soft-option activity you may have previously dismissed it as. Even just five minutes a day of quiet, deep breathing and reflection has repeatedly been proven to help alleviate stress, improve your mood, and increase productivity, enabling more effective and creative approaches to problem solving.  

Ray Dalio, the billionaire founder of Bridgewater Associates, encourages his employees to practice transcendental meditation on a regular basis, and claims that daily meditation helps him think more clearly and creatively. Dalio has also claimed that it reduces his stress and anxiety and improves his decision making. By implementing meditation time across his whole team, he’s fostering a workforce who are calm, clear-minded, focused, and positively approaching their tasks and targets.
Tech tycoons Jeff Weiner (LinkedIn’s Executive Chairman, formerly CEO) and Jack Dorsey (CEO of Square, formerly CEO of Twitter) have also both acknowledged the benefits they’ve found in daily mediation, while Bill Gates is another who meditates several times a week.

What next?

Looking for other ways to save time, improve your efficiency and increase productivity? Talent Ticker is an all-round solution that can save you hours of time a day and put you up to three months ahead of your competition.  

Book a quick 15-minute call with our team to see how you can spend less time doing business development and get more time to build stronger relationships with candidates and customers.