In the first session, a 65 minute video, of Wake Up Productive: The Inner Game and Outer Game of Time Management and Personal Productivity, Eben Pagan gives an introduction to the program and, in doing so, goes over a number of “Things that Rob Us of Productivity” and his “11 Principles of Personal Productivity”.

He begins the video by relating his own experiences, and struggles with, time management and personal productivity. Eben defines success as “what we want”, and delineates between “inner success” and “outer success”. He speaks of his 15 years of experience studying and applying lessons of human development, self-help, etc., and explains how these 15 years led him to where he is today: more successful and productive than ever, and in a great position to share what he has learned.

Eben then touches on a number of “Things that Rob Us of Productivity“. Among them is the idea that we live in an obsessive snacking culture. We snack on food, but we also snack with our attention. So, we need to learn to train our focus and increase our ability to focus on one thing at a time.

Finally, Eben goes through his “11 Principles of Productivity“. After going through his “11 Principles of Productivity”, Eben asks his students to, “Take what you’ve learned, look over your notes, put a star next to the biggest insight you got and ask yourself, ‘How can I apply that in my life?’, and write down one action step that you’re going to take as a result of going through this introductory section.

I would like to disclose my answer here, and, in doing so, reveal Eben’s Principle of Productivity #6: Focus Your Talents and Strengths on Your Biggest Opportunities.

Here’s my response:

Having watched the introduction, I am now more confident than ever than this will be a great course for me. I agree with and have studied everything that Eben spoke about, and it has all helped me in one way or another in the past. Now, as I am going through a difficult time, but also a time when there is great potential for me to move forward, it will be great to revisit these “Productivity Principles”, get into them in more depth, see how Eben applies them to his life and business, and see how I can apply them to my life and business.

When I look at the 11 Productivity Principles, the one that strikes me the most is Productivity Principle #6: Focus Your Talents and Strengths on Your Biggest Opportunities. When I first started thinking about it I wasn’t sure why. However, upon a little thought, I’ve got some ideas.

To begin, although I have thought a lot about what my talents and strengths are, I’ve never really done this thinking in a structured manner that would allow me to deliberately take action on the results. The second module of Rich Schefren’s Business Growth Systems deals with this matter, but I have yet to do the testing/research for this module. I think I am at a point now where thinking abstractly about this issue has yielded the fruits that it is going to yield and that it is time to delve deeper.

In addition, while I have spent a great deal of time studying and thinking about the important things in life and the opportunities that are out there and when and how I want to take advantage of them, I haven’t thought much about the opportunities in terms of which ones are the biggest, and I’m not sure how well I have separated “what is most important” from the “biggest opportunities”. Upon further thought, I may find that I have done this without being directly conscious of it, but I just haven’t thought about my life in these terms.

However, I think that the biggest reason Productivity Principle #6 jumps off the page at me is because I know that I’m not doing it. In fact, I have consciously made the decision not to. Rather than developing my talents into strengths and focusing them on my biggest opportunities, I have instead spent the past few years trying to compensate for my weaknesses. At first my weakness was not knowing much about the Internet and computers… then it was not knowing much about business (internet business in particular)… now it is not knowing much about code and servers, which is the next thing that I feel I need to learn to move forward.

On the other hand, I suppose that what I am doing and have been doing could be considered taking my talents and turning them into strengths. I think that I have the talent needed for the understanding of computers and the Internet, and internet business, and code and servers, to be strengths… in fact, I would say that, at this point, my understanding of computers and the Internet in particular, are now strengths (which is not to say that this understanding couldn’t be stronger).

However, on yet another hand, with regard to the code and servers, I’m really not looking to become “strong” in these areas… rather I’m just looking to gain some sort of rudimentary knowledge so that I can communicate effectively with programmers and server technicians… and this rudimentary knowledge will take me a few months of solid study to gain.

My lack of knowledge of code and servers is currently my biggest constraint, the thing that is holding me back the most. I could overcome this constraint by just hiring a programmer and/or server technician, and trusting that what they tell me is true, but I’m uncomfortable with this and I don’t think that this route will be best in the long term… which is why I want to learn about this stuff first before I give anyone more money to do this stuff for me.

I think the bottom line is that Productivity Principle #6 jumps off the page at me because I am confused by it… in terms of how to apply it to my life, and the extent to which it does apply to someone who considers himself a “Renaissance Man” and wants to become even more of one. In theory, it sounds great… but how does it work practically?

Thus, I think the most appropriate action step for me at this time is rather ambiguous: I will continue to think about this Productivity Principle in particular as I go through life and this program in an effort to gain greater clarity on my feelings about and approach to this Productivity Principle.

As you can see from my response, after watching the Intro video, I’m even more excited about Eben’s program. Although I focused on the Productivity Principle that confused me in my response, I certainly see the value in it and find all of Eben’s “11 Principles of Productivity” to be of great value.

If you want to get all of Eben Pagan’s “11 Principles of Productivity”, you’ll need to enroll in his Wake Up Productive: The Inner Game and Outer Game of Time Management and Personal Productivity program yourself, which you can do by clicking here: Wake Up Productive.