Balaji Rao | Startup Talks Show | An Entrepreneur's Journey of Entrepreneurship & Life

Was able to read Rework- Change the way you work forever in just 6 hours. A true outlier must-read for anyone who wants to unlearn and relearn how to work more efficiently and learn what should really matter. Have a couple more books to read before the year ends. Let's see how that goes Reading is especially seamless when you switch off all the digital devices that can distract you Have been planning to switch off my mobile phone during working hours. Need to try experimenting with longer hours 🤔 As a matter of fact, I consider myself a very bad reader. But I am trying my best to improve It's said that if you read you can live multiple lives in each of the books that you read and learn out of them Do you read #books [https://www.linkedin.com/feed/hashtag/?keywords=books&highlightedUpdateUrns=urn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A6749590026524340224]? Any suggestions for me and other folks? Also if you aren't what stops you? I Will try helping you out at my best. Send me a voice message link at the end of the show notes And finally thanks to my so-called mentor whom I call the Spiderman who comes to rescue and help the #youth [https://www.linkedin.com/feed/hashtag/?keywords=youth&highlightedUpdateUrns=urn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A6749590026524340224] - Ankur Warikoo [https://www.linkedin.com/in/ACoAAABOlvUB-6uQpj5VtIz3pACOBVaAzOdTRBA] 🤘 You can join our community - https://chat.whatsapp.com/H70AiiKKGP2HcS8IWAV1PE #reading [https://www.linkedin.com/feed/hashtag/?keywords=reading&highlightedUpdateUrns=urn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A6749590026524340224] #rework [https://www.linkedin.com/feed/hashtag/?keywords=rework&highlightedUpdateUrns=urn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A6749590026524340224] #productivity [https://www.linkedin.com/feed/hashtag/?keywords=productivity&highlightedUpdateUrns=urn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A6749590026524340224] --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/balajirao/message

There are things to be learned from everything that we do In sports-cricket, walking, playing, talking with people, helping others .....and the list goes on Now let's take a holistic approach What are the things that you learn from watching a cricket match? Just try gathering your thoughts. You could say, I find it entertaining, Cricket can help me pass time, I am a great fan of Dhoni, etc But I try to see it this way: 1. It keeps me aware of the need for being Physically fit 2. Preparation to Final match == Rehearsals to Exam/speech 3. Learn to reach and get inspired by how leaders perform under pressure 4. It's the team as a whole that wins - everyone brings in something unique to the result 5. Not every ball could be hit for a boundary the same way not every time we can expect some reward 6. Maintaining a constant run rate is important to keep up to the game, it's the same in our lives too- but of course context changes I could possibly think of 100 other things But I hope you are getting a gist of it It's just the shift in the way you tweak your though process to grab these learnings from anything and everything that you do To observe these learnings mindfulness in whatever you do also plays a key role to help you observe everything that's happening around you You can join our community - https://chat.whatsapp.com/H70AiiKKGP2HcS8IWAV1PE --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/balajirao/message

Don't confuse activity with Productivity Many people are Simply Busy being Busy and not heading anywhere I have experienced this very thing If I go back 6 months in the past - my schedule had 10-12 activities lined in the form of to-dos each and every single day And my job was to hunt these to-dos down 4 months into that I started realizing "I was putting in time and effort but things haven't but I was going nowhere" It's then I started to figure out the 80:20 rule I started to learn to focus on things that matter The change started after I read this book - "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck" It's all about prioritization ⚖️ This art of prioritization I am not only applying in day to day but also into my Product Management work Things have drastically changed past then Now I have a set of KPIs for what would put me in a situation to hit my short term goals (1-3 months) My activities on a day to day basis are solely dependent on those This change also came after I started to schedule and not just use to-dos as the way of doing my work I would like to thanks Ankur Warikoo [https://www.linkedin.com/in/ACoAAABOlvUB-6uQpj5VtIz3pACOBVaAzOdTRBA] sir for helping me incorporate that discipline You can see down below in the photo attached to the post - that's my KPIs now I am hunting them Keep things simple is the key🥁 --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/balajirao/message

Quitting Todo lists and moving towards Scheduling has been a game-changer to me What I mean by scheduling is creating habit-forming planning of certain buckets of jobs planned on day-wise every week Lets first see what TODO is then an example of Scheduling TODO: (its all about like a shopping list) Scheduling: Monday - Email reach outs & client relationships Tuesday - Team internal meetings & Project status checking Wednesday - Day for learning, upskilling, event recordings, courses This is how an example schedule looks like. What this does is helps you form habits and reduce context switching - not dealing with more things that lead you to switch your focus as well as resources This way transitioning from random list TODOS to actually planning my time has helped me manage time better Learnt this from Ankur Warikoo [https://www.linkedin.com/in/ACoAAABOlvUB-6uQpj5VtIz3pACOBVaAzOdTRBA] This really worked extraordinarily Folks start your new year with Scheduling and see how your efficiency get to 10X - you will start to understand Make your life more efficient in 2021 --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/balajirao/message

Humans often overestimate what they can do in a year and underestimate what they can do in 10 years.  With another year 2020 coming to an end let's see the one habit that has really helped me a lot to give myself direction whenever I wanted. That is the yearly journal. You might have heard of a daily journal where people write every day but I think that's too short of a time bracket for me and a lot of others who don't have the habit of writing. So here's something that I follow known as a Yearly Journal lets talk about how this has helped me better manage time, give myself direction, make wiser decisions and also keep my spirit up when I feel low or frustrated Tune in lets talk about this yearly journaling habit and how it always comes to my rescue --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/balajirao/message