Apple CEO Tim Cook wakes up at 3:45 a.m

PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi wakes up as early as 4 a.m to arrive in the office by 7 o’clock.

Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey is awake by 5:30 a.m.

Richard Branson rises with the sun at around 5:45 a.m.

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz is at the office by 6 a.m.

The list might go on…

The highly successful people have a lot of interesting habits and have different approaches to seemingly regular things. They all have tricks and hacks they apply daily…

However, none of them will ever help you increase your efficiency.

In the contemporary, ever-faster world, “productivity” has become both a buzzword and the holy grail of success for people around the world. Everyone everywhere aspires to achieve high efficiency to accelerate towards massive wins.

Thanks to the advanced technologies and easy access to the information, we all have a chance to instantly discover what stands behind the incredible stories of success.

Moreover, when it comes to productivity tips and hacks, the online world proves to be oversaturated with the books and articles that promise to reveal the things, habits, and approaches that let the world’s most successful people stay on track.

The authors globally try to assure you that those “5 time management tricks of highly successful people” will skyrocket your productivity. Their articles declare that those “7 daily habits of high-achievers” will take you closer to the things you want to accomplish faster than you ever thought possible.

Embrace the harsh truth. They won’t.

And the reason for that is simple: every habit, tip or hack is just a tiny tactic within a global strategy that often gets overlooked.

The habit of waking up early along with other habits and productivity tricks are so trivial when observed distinctly than none of them is worth your attention.

The point is that you won’t become more productive if you simply start rising with the sun.

You won’t become more efficient if you start writing things down in your notebook.

You won’t become more successful if you start processing your email inbox only once a day.

You won’t immediately be able to reap huge rewards for your work if you learn to prioritize, delegate and ultimately get the things done one day.

They all make sense and indeed add value if and only if they create a holistic complex that you are driven by on a consistent basis.

They work best only if all those tiny tactics are the interacting elements of one big goal-driven strategy.

Meanwhile, the random implementation of yet another “productivity hack” is not likely to take you far from the place you are now.

The daily habits — approaches to life — of the prominent leaders, prosperous entrepreneurs, and famous sportsmen are not the prerequisites of their success. Those are the small components of the general vision, mentality, and mindset that keep the tremendous mechanism going.

Make sure you don’t try to randomly implement someone else’s tactic hoping that it will work out. Besides a set of proven tactics, you need a holistic strategy in order to succeed.

Most productivity tips are indeed effective. The problem is that they aren’t effective for everyone out there. Nor are they effective while implemented without clear vision and understanding of the ultimate goal of your intentions.

If it works for someone, it won’t necessarily work for you.

Why?

Because there are other things that contribute to success. Some particular habit is not likely to be a keystone of the outstanding efficiency. It’s rather a tiny element of the global strategy developed over the years.

Stop relying on tactics. Start developing a strategy.

Stop exploiting an old way of thinking. Start embracing a new mindset.

Stop trying to fit someone’s narrative. Start building your own story.

Stop applying someone’s tricks. Start discovering what works for you.

Stop chasing the doubtful trends. Start striving for consistency.

Stop being an amateur. Start to think and act like a pro.

Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort

— Paul J. Meyer —

High efficiency is not a product of occasional implementation of a yet another productivity hack. It comes with time as a result of the successful execution of a well-designed strategy.