Here are the 7 habits the world's most successful entrepreneurs have

cultivated that allow them to consistently achieve, earn, and enjoy more.

1. Build blocks of time in which to create value.

Most business owners allow their time to be "sliced" to death. They have
5 minutes to focus on a project before an email interrupts them. Then they
move to a meeting, only to have 15 minutes to prep for the next meeting
that starts soon after the first. Then they get hit with 2 staff requests as
they leave that meeting on their way back to their office. And so goes their
day. Know this, it is extraordinarily hard to create your best value in small
slivers of time. We need blocks of 30 minutes to 2 hours of uninterrupted
time in which to think, to plan, to create, to execute on key items. One way
to create regular blocks of time is something I call "Focus Days", a concept
of carving out 2-4 hours one day a week in which to dedicate your time to
your highest value activities.

2. Reserve the first hour of the day for your highest value activities, not email.

Ordinary entrepreneurs crave control and immediate emotional rewards.

The first thing they do when entering the office is check their email. (In
fact, they likely already checked it twice before reaching the office.) What
a wasted opportunity. Instead, when you get to your office, block off the
first hour as your golden time to do one or two high value activities that
actually progress your business.99 percent of email just helps you tread
water, invest your golden hour in something that makes a difference.
Imagine the power of five uninterrupted hours each week (one hour a day
x five days a week) invested in your top priorities. Now multiply that by the
48 weeks a year you work (you are taking off a minimum of 4 weeks’
vacation a year right? If not, read this article now.) That's 240 working
hours a year of your best time doing your top value activities. That is a full
one and a half working months of upgraded time. All from blocking out
your golden hour each day.

3. Give your company the gift of your best attention.

Time isn't the scarcest resource--attention is. Your best attention, the time
when you are at your sharpest and most productive, is the scarcest
 resource in your arsenal. Most business owners squander their best
attention on low value email, staff interruptions that actually weaken the
business because their staff could have handled the situation on their
own, and on other "urgent" but low value tasks. Instead I'm pushing you
to take your best and most productive time (Is it in the morning? Or later
in the day?) And block it off to focus on the highest value items you and
only you can do for your company. Even if you only do this for one to two
hours a day the results you'll enjoy will be extraordinary.

4. Do fewer things, but make sure they are the things that really matter.

Once upon a time, when you first started your company, you did
everything. Later as the company grew you controlled everything. But to
make the shift to sustainably scale your company to all you want it to be
you've got to make one more key shift to give control back to your
business (to the systems, team, internal controls, and culture you've
created) and instead narrow your focus down to the few things that you
do that create the very most value.

5. Create your "Stop Doing" list.

In our working life we have those things that we "say" are more important,
and then we have those things that we actually invest our limited time and
attention on doing. The more congruent our behaviors are with our stated
goals and values in the workplace, as evidenced by what we invest our
time and attention working on, the more successfully we'll personally be,
and that our company will be. Then use your Stop Doing list to concretely
identify--in writing--those tasks, functions, or responsibilities that you will
no longer give your personal time and attention to. Then pick which of the
four "D's" you'll apply to get the item off your to do list, and what your next
step in making this transition happen for this item. The four D's include:
Delete (some tasks don't deserve to be done at all); Delegate (some tasks
need to get done, but someone else can do it not you); Defer (some things
need to get done and by you, just not this month or this quarter); Design
them out (refine your systems to keep the task from coming up in the first
place.)
6. Put a hard stop at the close of your business day.

When you are at work--work. Be ruthlessly intentional about your time.

Invest every hour of it for maximum business gain. And when you are
home, block out work, and be with your family and enjoy your life. When
you let your work bleed over to your life you not only make a trade that
isn't worth it (I have several friends who have built multimillion and
multibillion dollar companies who are divorced with estranged older
children who will back this up) but what's more, it degrades your ability to
create your best value over time at work. We all need to recharge and
bring in fresh ideas and perspective into our business, this means we
need time away from the daily grind. So pick your working hour limits and
hold firm to them. For me, I put a hard stop at my working hours at an
average of 40 hours a week and commit up front to block out and enjoy
10 weeks of vacation time a year. This commitment forces me use my
working hours better. Plus at the end of the day, what am I doing this for
if not for the family I love?

7. Celebrate progress, not pinnacle moments.

Most business owners suffer from a perspective disease which pushes

them to ignore progress and instead focus on all that is still left to do.
When a team member shares a victory they say, "That's great, and now
we need to ..." They leave their team feeling like the entrepreneur is the
parent they can never please no matter how hard they try or how well they
perform. So I encourage you to practice celebrating progress--your teams
and your own--and build your muscles to savor, at least for a few minutes,
the small steps you and your team take forward that mark progress
towards your company goals. When you can let these progress moments
in and enjoy them, you'll start to give your team permission to do the same,
and over time the spirit of making progress will imbue your team with an
optimism and energy that will translate into faster progress. And as a side
benefit you'll retain your top people and help develop them into better and
higher producing team members.

So there you have the seven most important productivity habits for you to
develop as a business owner. If you want to learn more about mastering
your use of time, I'm about to teach a new webinar that will focus in large
part how you can create much more value in less time.