Meet Paul Minors. One of the most helpful and genuine productivity bloggers online. If you’re looking to improve your productivity and design a less busy lifestyle, read his work.
After going through Paul’s videos and articles I learned some neat productivity tricks and switched to Pipedrive as my main content marketing consulting sales tool.
Here’s my interview with Paul Minors where he explains productivity multipliers, sleep, time management and investing habits.
Paul Minors
Paul Minors is a productivity blogger and virtual consultant. Paul grew his business “on the side” while working full-time and now consults to companies all around the world helping them with tools like Asana, Pipedrive, MailChimp and Zapier. Paul’s website now receives 100,000+ visits per month and his audience of 45,000+ email subscribers love hearing about how to be more productive in business and life.
What Are the Most Influential Habits in Your Life?
Eating well, exercising regularly and getting lots of sleep are top priorities. I view diet, sleep and exercise as “productivity multipliers” that boost your output in every element of your life. Even if you don’t change anything else about how you do your work habits, you’ll find that your efficiency, focus and output all go up. And when you live a healthier lifestyle, you’ll get sick less often and feel stronger and more capable on a daily basis.
How Do You Manage Time?
I’m a big believer in “time blocking.” In other words, scheduling time for tasks on my calendar. This is really powerful as it helps me to take a list of tasks and plan not just when I’m going to do them, but how long I need to complete the work. This is a much more realistic way of planning as you are forced to make trade offs between tasks and it’s impossible to over commit.
What’s Your Work Process and Thinking Behind It?
I try to make decisions very slowly. In other words, really think about an idea before I decide to do it. Then I’ll plan out all the steps using Asana and schedule time to do the work on my calendar. This way I can make sure I have enough time to do all the things I want to get done.
How Do You Train Your Body and Mind?
I try and read on a regular basis. Meditation is also really important and if I don’t meditate for a while I really notice the difference. I’m also a big CrossFit junkie and it’s great for developing mental endurance. I also journal every few weeks. Nothing fancy. I just write down whatever’s on my mind. I find it really interesting to go back and see what I was thinking at different points in time.
How Do You Meet and Connect with People?
Mainly Twitter. I also love connecting with my newsletter subscribers as I feel this is a lot more personal. I also have a Slack group for my best customers and I’ve become great friends with some of the people I’ve met here.
What Are Your Sleeping Rituals?
I usually go to sleep around 10-10:30 pm and wake around 6:30 am. As we have a 7-month old there can be a few disturbances during the night.
What Are Your Investing Habits?
I’m pretty frugal and only buy things that I need. I try and retain some self-control when it comes to buying the latest gadgets and toys. Right now my main goal is to pay off our mortgage. I’m an avid saver but make small purchases of Bitcoin each week. I really do think the adoption of Bitcoin will be one of the biggest economic developments of our time.
What Books, People, Experiences Shaped Your Thinking?
Start with Why by Simon Sinek really helped me develop a sense of purpose.
The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss is like my bible. It’s a great playbook for how to run an efficient business that supports your lifestyle.
The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday was my gateway into Stoicism. I’ve become really interested in Stoicism which gives you very practical guidelines on how to live a happier life.