Every human is lazy by default. We, humans, tend to become lazier in comparison with our predecessors. Regardless, we all dream to be successful in life. In a broader view, success is attributed to wealth, good health, good personal relations.

There's nothing wrong in dreaming for success, but you are not going to achieve it keeping your eyes closed. You are supposed to take necessary actions to turn your dreams into reality. Nothing can bring overnight success. Success requires persistent effort. In simpler words, you need to formulate a few habits to be successful. Your habits will ultimately make you successful. If you look at all the successful entrepreneurs who are self-made, they all have one thing in common, and that's "reading."

Almost all of the successful self-made entrepreneurs are voracious readers. Some of them include Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, etc. Reading makes you understand things better. It compounds your knowledge every single day. 

For a lot of people, reading is tedious. Indeed it was boring for me in the beginning. I had my primary education in an ordinary school where we chase grades. And reading what's necessary for the exam was the criteria back then. I never had any interest in reading, all I did was to read for exams and write them well. That didn't develop a habit of learning, but it helped in shaping my career and developing an interest in reading and learning.

Now am an Entrepreneur managing multiple things simultaneously. My job includes managing people, assigning work, monitoring work, understanding new technologies and adapting them, looking for new opportunities, dealing with financial hurdles and many more. I don't claim myself as the most successful entrepreneur but am indeed more successful than 98% of my peers.

As am involved in too many things, initially, it was hard for me to take time for reading. Later on, I realized its importance and started dedicating more time. Currently, am addicted to reading and I read quite a lot of stuff every single day. Yes, I read over 400+ articles per day, and during weekends I read over 1000+. I love the weekends because I can, read more. 

But, when it comes to reading, I developed a specific mechanism using which I curate only the stuff that's important for me and my development in the areas am interested in, which includes;

1. Crypto and Blockchain
2. Psychology
3. Science
4. Digital Marketing
5. Entrepreneurship 
6. Security and Programming

My Guide for Being Productive:

My productivity recipe has three ingredients;

1. Science
2. Tech and 
3. Common Sense.

The Scientific Approach

Though being from a financial background, am a huge fan of science. I try to read, understand and implement hacks using modern scientific discoveries. One such practice I have been following for more than two years is Bio-Hacking. Though, am not an aggressive Bio-Hacker. I practice a list of things on a regular basis which is not widely accepted by the society. Nope, am not talking about LSD's. Am talking about Smart Drugs. In this article, I won't be mentioning much about Bio-Hacking, but I will explain the science behind the same which helps me in being more productive.

Like darkness is the absence of light, boredom, and lack of motivation is due to lack of Dopamine. Dopamine is a hormone that motivates you to do things. You can achieve a lot more when your dopamine levels are higher. 

Supplementing external dopamine to your body can be dangerous, especially when you are overdosing. That's what happens when people are on Cocaine, it gives tremendous dopamine boost, and they won't be able to live in a healthy state without cocaine. However, this is not at all healthy as this will hack your brain forever and inhibits natural dopamine production. There are a few relatively safe smart drugs, which when taken in proper dosage helps in dopamine enhancement along with a few natural ways like;

1. Cold showers.
2. Excercise
3. Meditation
4. Sleep 
5. Music
6. Sports/Dance

Apart from smart drugs, I  consume about 300-400mg of Caffeine, coconut oil, a handful of almonds, omega fatty acids, multi-vitamin supplement.

All these keep me awake and focused throughout the day. Any drop in mood will be enhanced by Nicotine(I don't smoke, I instead consume nicotine in the form of lozenges). I will write a separate article on my bio-hacking practices in detail.

Being Productive with Tech:

Undoubtedly, technology made our lives simpler. But, social media made things terrible for our generation. Aggressive usage of social media leads to lack of attention span. I used to be quite active on social media especially Facebook. Instagram and SnapChat. Later I found am killing my precious time and switched to platforms that help me grow while using them like Twitter, Medium, Steemit, etc. I barely use Social Media these days. I mute all the Messenger and WhatsApp notification. However, I keep checking them once every hour to see if there are any messages related to my work.

Coming to reading stuff, I developed a mechanism where I curate my favorite content in one place and read it whenever I want to. I usually spend anywhere between 5-8 hours on just reading apart from my daily work. Minimum of 2-3 hours in the morning followed by 2-3 hours after office hours and I read whenever I get time in between meetings and work.

I use a combination of IFTTT + Pocket + (Twitter, Reddit, Medium, etc.) and curate stuff I love to read.

Here's how it works:

1. Pocket - Pocket is one stop to curate content from all places. Simple yet great tool to organize all materials in one place.
2. IFTTT - It's a great tool to create triggers based on your favorite recipe. I send all the content to pocket either manually or using automatic triggers to my pocket. I also have few people who help me in curating content and send them to pocket. Pocket is my go-to place to read the latest news, articles, and analysis on various stuff.
3. Triggers - I create a trigger on IFTTT like whenever I hit like on Twitter Tweet, the first link will automatically save to my pocket; whenever I upvote some thread on Reddit, the link will automatically save on my pocket for reading later. Such, triggers are present on all the platforms I browse throughout the day.

I have many IFTTT integrations to automating a lot of mundane stuff. There are tons of IFTTT integrations based on your requirements. You can do a quick Google Search, and you will find tons of articles on various recipes. 

Few more hacks:

Even though you have done the above two, you must find enough time to implement them and turn them into habits on a regular basis, which I see many people fail to achieve. Here am listing few more critical things you must do to keep things going with the same momentum you started with;

• Start small and understand what you are capable of doing today. Always remember it's one step at a time and there's no shortcut.
• Do things that matter: Do not waste time on things that don't matter. You can do anything but not everything. So, prioritize things and work only on things that you think can compound over a period.
• 1 Minute Rule: Anything that takes less than 1 minute, do it immediately.
• 5 Minute Rule: Do things that takes less than 5 minutes to finish. Your 80% of works should be done with 1 minute and 5-minute rules.
• Reduce meetings: Most of the meetings are a big waste of time. More than 80% of the meetings doesn't lead to any constructive outcomes. Attend meetings only you think are really important. Prefer a video call or mail instead of repeated useless meetings.
• Avoid Phone calls: A single phone call might not kill your time, but it's a huge productivity killer. You build your focus on solving a significant thing and suddenly your phone rings, now you need to develop your focus all over again.

Remember, only when you take control of your habits, you take control of your life.

Let me know some productive hacks that you have been practicing in your life that made you a better person.