If you are like me, then you consume A LOT of information.

Training programs, books, and even coaching programs are all a part of my daily diet of information consumption. I have set aside two solid hours everyday to learn something new.

While most people are turning their brains into stewed vegetables by watching TV or mindlessly surfing the Internet, I am trying to cram as much new knowledge into my tiny brain as I can handle. Learning is my hobby.

But hobbies don’t pay the bills.

And learning doesn’t pay the bills either.

The only thing that will make you money is action. The only time you get paid is if you create something. Only value creation nets wealth.

This is a fundamental truth of capitalism. It is as fundamental to capitalism as gravity is to the physics. You may have isolated cases of exception, but the majority of those cases end in jail time.

Even the ultimate brainiacs of our western society, college professors, aren’t paid to learn. They are paid to produce research. There is a saying in the academic world “Publish or Perish” and it rings true for all of us.

If you feel like you are working your tail off and your bank account isn’t reflecting that, then the first place to look for a fix is your productivity.

When you start creating value with your own hands/mind/production team, then it is almost impossible for you to not make money.

Follow this simple productivity hack and watch the money flow:

How To Set Up A Production Schedule

If you don’t have a schedule with due dates for your projects you will never get out the gate.

When I first started writing fiction I told myself I would finish my book when I was “ready”. Fast forward two and a half years and I finally just sat down and said, “This book is going to be finished by such-and-such a date.” And guess what, it did get finished.

The only thing that changed was I gave myself a due date.

I had been doing this for years with my various offline and online businesses. For example, when I ran a pay for performance business I said, “I will rank your site first page in X months or your money back.” (I wouldn’t recommend doing that nowadays – this was pre-penguin and panda). And you know what? I never missed a date.

Recently, when I created the flash-business and launched that copywriting service, I promised clients a 72 hour turnaround on orders. Why? Not because I wanted to make them happy. I needed a tight schedule to hold myself too. After serving 56 clients, I didn’t miss a single 72 hour turn around.

If you are someone who likes to have their hands in multiple projects at the same time (like I do) you MUST have a production schedule. Here is what I recommend:

Step 1 – Use Software To Make Life Easier

Sign up for Asana. It is free, it is sexy, and it is better than most of the paid productivity apps out there.

This Is My Favorite Software Of All Time

Step 2 – Brain Dump

Pull out a white board or a sheet of paper and mind dump EVERYTHING that you want to do. Don’t worry about WHEN you want to do it at this point. For example, you could say “I want to buy a 5 bedroom house on a golf course” and you could also say “I want to finish today’s blog post” all in the same brain dump.

You just need to get it out of your head.

You can draw a mindmap, you can create lists or you can just plop it all on the paper in no particular order – which is exactly what I do.

Step 3 – Create Actionable Steps

You need to take everything that you wrote on the white board and break each project down into actionable steps. For example, if you want to launch a new information product, what are the steps that need to be completed?

The Steps To Success – I Found Them!

Finish the product

Set up the JV page

Contact JVs

Set up links

Set up sales page

etc.

The key to making this system work for you is to break these steps into TINY, DOABLE steps that you will actually take.

The point of this step is to make your projects seem more bearable. Instead of thinking, “I am going to buy a 5 bedroom mansion.” You break it down into smaller steps. First, I am going to build a website. Then I am going to comment on blogs to get traffic etc. all the way up to getting that big house you always wanted.

The #1 reason you aren’t taking any action is because your goal is too intimidating.

I know the feeling.

I wanted to write a novel.

That is an intimidating goal for someone who has wanted to be a writer since he was 7. The reason it took me 2+ years before I even sat down to write it was because I hadn’t broken it down to manageable tasks.

Instead of making a goal to write a novel in X amount of days, I worked backwards and simply said – “I need to write 2,500 words today.”  That is it. Eventually, after enough of those type of days, I my novel was finished – and I have published 6 more using that same exact method.

Step 4 – Give Yourself Due Dates

You need to assign due dates for each of these tasks. Give yourself a 70% efficiency rating when selecting your dates.

For example, if you think you can write 1000 words per hour and you are planning on creating a 10,000 word information product, don’t say you are going to finish it in 10 hours – be realistic and give yourself a 70% efficiency rating and say that you can actually only get 700 words done per hour. You should plan for the project to take you 14 hours, not 10.

The problem with most people’s productivity is that they set themselves up to fail by being too generous about their own focus and ability.

If you have never written a novel before – don’t say you are going to write a novel in two days. You simply can’t predict the hurdles and challenges that you might face in your production.

Step 5 – Load It All Up

Lastly, once you have all your projects, the steps to getting them completed and their due dates written down somewhere, load all that stuff into Asana. Make sure that your settings allow Asana to bombard your inbox with due date reminders.

One of the nice things about having a production schedule is that it allows your mind some rest. You don’t have to constantly be thinking about what to do next – instead you can focus all that brain power on actually getting things accomplished.

When you put your shoulder to wheel and start CREATING stuff instead of just thinking about stuff, you achieve something called RESULTS. And when you start collecting enough of those results you start earning money.

If This Doesn’t Pump You Up To Get Working Then I Don’t Know What Will…

P.S.

Let me get extra real with you for a second.

When people say “You are the only one stopping yourself from success.” They aren’t kidding.

If you want to become the greatest copywriter in the world. You can.

You aren’t the greatest copywriter in the world right now because you haven’t DONE anything to deserve that title yet. You don’t have the body of work. You don’t have the connections. You don’t have the skills.

If you want to be the greatest SEO in the world you can. But you need to have DONE something to claim that title. Do you have any rankings? Have you written and published a Kindle book on SEO (if not, you should)?

Even if you don’t want to be the greatest and you just want to be sufficient enough to get paid – you need to DO something before you can collect money.

This is why I hate 99.9% of the information products out there. Their emphasis is on the learning when it should be on the doing. Nobody gets paid to learn except trust fund bluebloods – and I wouldn’t trade places with people like that for all the gold in the world.

Do something right now.

Seriously. Quit “researching” and just get out there and accomplish something. Finish a project. Rank a site. Write a sales letter. Even if you aren’t getting paid for it – DO IT!

The only people who get remembered in this life are the people who DID something.

I plan on DOING as much as I can every single day.