The document outlines three key rules for personal productivity to achieve success in 2018, emphasizing the importance of hard work and smart strategies. Key recommendations include minimizing digital distractions, outsourcing tasks, and using data to track productivity. Tools like hibox, rescuetime, and streaks are suggested to help individuals enhance their productivity and maintain focus on their goals.

1. 3 RULES
OF PERSONAL PRODUCTIVITY
FOR A SUCCESSFUL 2018

2. • What are the essential personal productivity rules to achieve success
in this coming year?
• When asked about his arguably insane workweek schedule, the man
of 2017, Elon Musk said “If other people are putting in 40 hour
workweeks and you’re putting in 100 hour workweeks, then even if
you’re doing the same thing, you know that you will achieve in four
months what it takes them a year to achieve.”
• Obviously, as Elon and any other world-changing innovator will tell
you, personal productivity requires hard work; plain and simple

3. • But to really get ahead and achieve more in 2018 than even your
wildest resolutions, you’ve got to work harder and, more
importantly, smarter
• We’re all given the same hours a day and the free will to make them
work for us or against us
• Personal productivity is all about converting that finite amount of
time to long-lasting benefits in the most efficient way possible
• If you plan on making 2018 an Elon-level year of accomplishments and
resolutions fulfilled, here are a few tips and tools to help you work
hard and smarter for your most productive year thus far

4. #1
DESTROY DIGITAL
DISTRACTION

5. • Considering we all accepted talking to the thin air in our homes to
make things happen in 2017, it’s fair to say we’re getting
increasingly connected to each other and literally
everything around us
• This will get even more intrinsic in 2018
• Unfortunately, this has also lead to our attention spans
being literally less than that of a goldfish
• Overall, it’s great we can respond to every question or problem
within seconds but we’re over communicating to the point where
we don’t actually work anymore

6. • We’ve lost the ability to fall into deep work; our most productive
state
• Make deep work a resolution in 2018
What to use to break your social addiction:
• Disconnect temporarily by deleting social media from easy-to-
click places like your bookmarks and the main screen on your
phone

7. • Getting rid of the number of options your brain has to delegate
attention to will help you to focus on tasks with more intention,
producing quality work faster
• If it’s websites that distract you like Facebook, try StayFocusd to
block them for certain amounts of time
Control email before it controls you:
• Another great way to minimize your need to be communicating
24/7 so you can focus uninterrupted is to have an auto-email set to
reply to emails throughout the day that tells clients, etc. that you
will respond within 24 hours to their email

8. • This takes the pressure off responding every 5 minutes and
anyone contacting gets an informative response so they’re still in
the loop
Hibox:
• Eliminate email entirely with your team
• Email is an outdated and siloed way of communicating
• Hibox is task management software with a company chat, file
sharing, and videoconferencing built in

9. • You don’t need to leave the platform for all the functionality you
need to coordinate work with your team
• The more centralized and actionable communication, the more
productive your work will be
SaneBox
• Organizes your emails as they come into specific folders you can
get to later
• This is great for filtering out what is important from what can wait

10. #2
SCHEDULE UNINTERRUPTED
BLOCKS OF TIME
#2
OUTSOURCE WHAT YOU
SHOULDN’T BE DOING

11. #2
SCHEDULE UNINTERRUPTED
BLOCKS OF TIME
• It’s clear Elon Musk isn’t micromanaging every little task that needs
to get done by the team beneath him
• No matter if it’s just you or a whole team, in order to truly be
productive, you have to use those finite hours wisely and not waste
time on the things you shouldn’t be
• If there are things you can outsource, get in the habit this year
• There are so many virtual tools available to help us free up the
minutes and hours that are going to make a difference at the end of
the day

12. #2
SCHEDULE UNINTERRUPTED
BLOCKS OF TIME
Carly:
• Set up Carly, an AI robot that calls you in a few minutes before your
scheduled call, and never be late or waste your time again
Amy:
• This one is a bit of a more personal option than scheduling service
links like Calendly if you tend to deal with individuals on a more
personal level
• Amy is an AI bot that will have the “What time are you free for a
call?” email conversation for you and automatically add whatever
time your client and Amy decide on to your calendar.

13. #3
LEARN AND IMPROVE FROM
THE DATA…ON YOURSELF

14. • Data (should) drive most business decisions to more profitable and
efficient solutions
• Too often we can’t really answer where all our time, money, and
energy goes yet we feel overrun and unproductive
• It’s time to get real honest about your habits if you want to really
improve your personal productivity
• Put just a little effort into tracking where you spend your time and
energy so you can better your decisions and schedule for a
productive 2018

15. RescueTime:
• Try using RescueTime just once for a real wake up call as to where
all your time goes online
• It will give you data on your online habits down to which websites
are consuming most of your day
• It’s helpful to see the honest truth so you know your weaknesses
and can better avoid them
• It’s also a great way to stay on top of how much time you spend on
each type of work/task so you can better plan your daily and
weekly schedule as well

16. Streaks:
• Have you ever started on a daily goal and lost track of it along the
way?
• This happens to most of us below the one month mark, which is
what is necessary to make a certain action a habit
• Make sure to be building good habits during your busy schedule and
motivating yourself to do so with Streaks
• Streaks is an easy habit logging app (and even automatically records
some like steps walked) that helps show you how you’re doing with
keeping up with the little things that matter in the long run

17. • Whether it be reading, fitness, meditating, etc., Streaks shows you
exactly how you’ve been on those little long-term goals
• Again, personal productivity is a combination of working harder
and smarter
• No one can help you with the “working harder” part but I do hope
that these few suggestions will help with the “working smarter”
part and, in turn, will inspire you to reach Elon levels of personal
productivity in 2018

18. LEARN MORE AT OUR BLOG!
https://www.hibox.co/blog/three-rules-personal-productivity-successful-2018/