Being a public speaker I had to be good at thinking on my feet. Why? Because I suck at learning scripts and doing rehearsed speeches.

This has proved to be a big plus for me as I am now very confident when I need to ‘let go’ and just trust that everything is going to work out okay even if I have no idea what the final result will be.

So what has this got to do with doing nothing? Quite a lot actually. I’m currently on a vacation in Byron Bay, Australia. If you haven’t been there or heard about it then check it out as it really is heaven on Earth.

Plenty of movie starts come here because they can blend in and don’t get fussed over because everyone is happy in their own space.

It’s the kind of place that once you arrive you just want to drop your baggage and relax into the nurturing ambience.

I’m spending quite a bit of time at the beach… swimming, yoga, meditation, chilling and the like.

This has given me plenty of time to ‘stop thinking’ and just be totally spontaneous and free with my time. As a result I have some powerful breakthroughs into what the next year is going to hold for me.

I now have direction and a vision of where I’m headed over the next 12 months – all of which came out of nowhere.

How To Tap Into Your Creative Genius Every Day

Sometimes the greatest ideas arise out of doing nothing. My guess is that when we are relaxed on the inside then we have an open channel in our mind that is not distracted by the million and one things we need to do each day.

This headspace is priceless. In fact, it’s worth having every day.

The great news is that you can have it everyday. How? By giving yourself time-out each day to be spontaneous and free from commitments and obligations.

Sure, we can’t all get to spend everyday at the beach but we sure as heck can create the space in our home or somewhere to relax deeply on the inside and let your mind be free to go where it will.

All it takes is just 20 minutes of your time each day to make this part of your daily rituals.

To me, this is probably the most important way to spend your time that you can give to yourself because it will enable you to tap into your deepest levels of creative genius.

Movement and Breath

The first thing to do in the morning is move your body. Get physical with your body first to start warming it up. Just 5 minutes of walking combined with rhythmic breathing will get your day  started with power.

The breathing technique is quite simple, as you walk breath in through your nose for the count of four and then breath out of your mouth for the count of four.

This cyclic style of breathing will help to stimulate your body and start to cleanse itself while  turning on your metabolism and emotions for the day.

Visualize Your Day

What you can do now is to start visualizing your day the way you WANT it to be. This only needs to take 5 to 10 minutes in the morning. This is conditioning your mind and body to start to set yourself up for success in advance.

If it helps, you can start by thinking about everything you are grateful for in your life for a couple of minutes. This helps you to focus on positive emotions and energy to begin the day with. Then, take these emotions and focus on what you want to create for the day.

Think about what you want to do; What you want to have; What do you want to achieve; What do you want to make a difference to; What you want to feel; and mostly what you want to get from the day? Some people llike to use this as meditation time, but the important thing is that you can focus on what you want.

The Power of Affirmation

You can reprogram your subconscious mind by telling it what you want your brain to be, do, or have in your life. Whatever you are working on in your life is where you start. For example, if you want to feel happier and more productive each day then affirm something like:

“I love that my life is filled with happiness and that I am highly effective at all I do”. Or, if you want to attract more prosperity in your life, “I am so happy that abundance flows in and through me in unlimited ways”.

Just repeat these affirmations to yourself for 5 minutes, and if you can speak them out loud. This is like a mental gymnastic workout because you are repetitively saying something to yourself ‘as if it already exists’.

This retrains your brain for success because ultimately you will create in your life what you focus on most of the time.

Get Your Groove On

Last but not least give your body a 20 minute workout doing something you enjoy. Get your heart rate up, get a little sweaty and feel good about moving your body. You can dance, jog, skip, swim, run, cycle or whatever you like that floats your boat.

What’s important though is that you are doing something each day to set your mind, body and emotions up for success. Even if you just start with fifteen minutes each morning to begin with, that’s good enough. As time goes by aim for an hour each morning and watch how you life transforms in leaps and bounds.

It gets worse. Taking a long time to do anything creates a NEGATIVE association to that task. Therefore, next time you have to do it… you’ll naturally be resistant to it. Because you’ll think of the last time you did it… how long and cumbersome it was… and pretty soon you’ll find creative ways to procrastinate on it.

Put this in your mind and keep it there – developing peak productivity is one of the most valuable skills you can cultivate in your business. And I’m going to show you how to do just that.

Peak Productivity Starts With Measurement

Peak productivity starts with measurement… and one of the best measurements is to know if today will be a “success” or “failure” for you.

Question: do you know if yesterday was a success or not? The day before? And the day before that? You should know the answer to that… EVERYDAY.

Here’s how you know if a day was a success or not: if you met the MEASURABLE goal you set for that day. Wait, what’s that? You don’t set a goal every single day for that day? If not, you should do so ASAP. If you follow this one practice alone, your productivity will at least triple. Simple as that.

Long term goals are dead. The chaos of the marketplace and the rapid change we all experience these days makes long term goals ineffective. You need short term goals. One a day.

So here’s what it looks like. You wake up in the morning. You know exactly  what you need to do that day to define the day as a success. Then at the end of the day you simply look back at your goal…

And ask yourself – did I meet it or not? If you go day after day not meeting your goal – then who are you kidding? You’re screwed. You either need to change your goals or change how you approach your goals.

Every single day – you should have a goal for that day. Then you do it. Welcome to the world of high level productivity.

 The Perfect Productivity Killer

Here’s a statement you should agree with – striving to be perfect is imperfect. You know what perfect really is in the market place? Good enough is PERFECT. There will be times when you don’t write exactly what you wanted to write when you send an email out to your list. Who cares? As long as you got the basic point across, it doesn’t matter.

There might be a time when you’re setting up a blog and you want the header to be slightly different… but you tweaked it… and tweaked it… and tweaked it… and you can’t get it there. Who cares? Is the header really that important? No. Move on.

Tying this to your daily goal will help you out tremendously. If your goal for that day was to spend 3 hours driving traffic, that’s 3 hours less you have to spend tinkering with other stuff. So that helps there. But it goes beyond that – your customers don’t want perfect.

They HATE it when you try to be perfect. Because they’d rather have “good enough” NOW than perfect 4 weeks from now. They just want the information. They just want the technique.

Here’s what will help you to eliminate this whole “it has to be perfect” problem — you can always improve it later. You can always make it better later. So put it out there and set the goal that two weeks from now you’ll go back and spend 2 hours improving it.

Better to get it out to the market place as quickly as possible, and THEN improve it based on feedback instead of trying to make it perfect. You do no one a benefit if you try to make things perfect. Not your customers. Not you. No one. So work for “good enough” instead.

Always Use A Deadline

Here’s the best strategy to force yourself to work for “good enough” – a self-imposed deadline. Every task worth doing in your business must have a deadline attached to it. And to take it a step further – when that deadline is up, you’re done.

The nature of the deadline makes you deal with the most critical elements of a task. If you don’t have a deadline on a task, then you can focus on anything for any period of time, because there is no sense of urgency.

Here’s a sentence you should put in your brain and keep there – anything worth doing in business must have a deadline attached to it.

Checking email must have a deadline attached to it. Writing a blog post must have a deadline attached to it. Setting up a website must have a deadline attached to it. Writing a sales letter must have a deadline attached to it. ANYTHING worth doing must have a deadline attached to it.

When you follow this principle, you will easily triple your productivity.