How CEOs Get Sh*t Done - 5 Productivity Rules to Do More in Less Time

There's a myth that creativity stems from spontaneous bursts of inspiration or innate genius, but according to numerous creative professionals and productivity experts, creativity is actually the result of consistent, disciplined work habits.

Manage Your Day-to-Day is a collection of essays by some of today’s best-known creative minds, including Cal Newport (Deep Work), Steven Pressfield (The War of Art), and Gretchen Rubin (The Happiness Project and The Four Tendencies). Published by 99U, a resource platform and conference series that empowers creative professionals, the book offers strategies to optimize your productivity, focus, and creativity in today's fast-paced world, as well as practical tools to enhance your daily routine, overcome distractions, and unlock your creative potential.

Whether you're a creative professional, an entrepreneur, or anyone seeking to reclaim their creativity, Manage Your Day-to-Day is a resource to help inspire and guide you toward reaching your full creative potential.

In his epic 707-page Tools of Titans, Tim Ferriss shares the habits and beliefs of 101 people at the top of their game, including tech investors like Chris Sacca and Peter Thiel, entrepreneurs like LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman and Evernote’s Phil Libin, superhuman athletes like Amelia Boone and Wim Hof, media figures like Edward Norton and Whitney Cummings, and more.

These are the principles that successful people use to achieve audacious goals, improve themselves, and be happier. The premise: if you can apply the lessons from this book, you can be more effective.

In Discipline Is Destiny, Ryan Holiday examines the power of discipline through the lens of the ancient Greek philosophy of Stoicism. Holiday argues that your ability to practice discipline—one of the four cardinal virtues of Stoicism—determines how successful you are (aka your destiny). This is because discipline dictates whether you work consistently and avoid the temptations that prevent you from attaining or maintaining success.

Holiday is a modern-day Stoic philosopher who’s written or co-written several best-selling books on Stoicism, including The Obstacle Is the Way, Ego Is the Enemy, and The Daily Stoic. Published in 2022, Discipline Is Destiny is the second book in his four-part series highlighting each of the four cardinal virtues of Stoicism. (Courage Is Calling was the first.)

In this guide, we’ll explain what discipline is and why it matters. Then, we’ll describe how to practice discipline throughout various stages of your life. Along the way, we’ll compare Holiday’s ideas with those of other self-help experts.

Running a successful business requires a lot of time and effort, but it doesn’t have to take over your life. In Buy Back Your Time, veteran entrepreneur Dan Martell says you can run a profitable business and make time for the things you love without having to work yourself to the bone. Simply buy back your time: Hire others to take over some of your work, and then invest your reclaimed time in activities that replenish your energy and advance your business. Martell shares practical strategies for managing your time better, including how to identify a task’s value, waste less time at work, and create optimized schedules for achieving your personal and professional goals.

In this guide, we’ll discuss how to prioritize and delegate tasks, run your business more efficiently, and create weekly and yearly plans to optimize your time. Along the way, we’ll supplement Martell’s strategies with advice from other self-improvement experts and provide additional practical tips for taking control of your time.

What if you were just one step away from the life of your dreams? In The Power of One More, entrepreneur Ed Mylett argues that putting a little extra effort into anything you do can completely transform your life. Whether it’s doing one more set at the gym, waking up an hour earlier, or connecting with one new person, these small efforts add up over time to create big results. Mylett provides a guide for developing the mindset and habits to consistently go the extra mile and find greater success in all areas of life.

In this guide, we’ll lay out Mylett’s advice for adopting an extra-mile mindset, setting inspiring goals, mastering focus and time management, cultivating high-quality relationships, and overcoming obstacles. Along the way, we’ll compare Mylett’s tips with those of other personal development authors and suggest additional actionable strategies for going the extra mile.

There isn’t enough time in the day to meet all of the work and personal responsibilities you’re swamped with, let alone keep up with email, social media, and all the things you’ve been meaning to read. In Eat That Frog, business consultant Brian Tracy says the answer is to identify your most important task—the one with the greatest consequences—and do that first each day. It’s like eating a frog: when you have a big challenge, or frog to eat, it’s best to get it out of the way first; everything after that will be easier by comparison. Based on this insight, Tracy offers a list of practical tips for improved productivity and success.

According to author and entrepreneur Keith Ferrazzi, developing fulfilling and mutually beneficial professional relationships, or successfully networking is crucial to career success. Becoming a prolific networker will give you a reputation for having good people skills, making it easier for you to gain positions managing others. Likewise, if you already know and get on well with company leaders, they may choose to do business with you rather than people they don’t know.

In Never Eat Alone, Ferrazzi gives tips on building and maintaining a professional network. Learn how to network with people who can help you achieve your goals; how to use conferences to network; and how to use social media to get new contacts to come to you.

Jack Canfield struck gold as a co-author of the best-selling Chicken Soup for the Soul book series, but it took years for him to achieve success. In The Success Principles, he details 67 principles to help anyone achieve their goals and dreams, based on his study and interviews with hundreds of successful people. The basic formula for success is to identify what you want, know that you deserve to have it, and use the book’s principles to get you there.

The book's Principles include taking responsibility for your life, setting goals and visualizing success, facing your fears, forgiving others so you can move forward, asking for and graciously receiving feedback, and appreciating your successes.

Do you feel like the job market is changing faster than ever? Does job stability seem like a thing of the past? In The Startup of You, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and entrepreneur Ben Casnocha argue that to build a successful career in the modern world, you must approach your career as if it were a startup company—something that’s always growing and adapting. By applying principles of entrepreneurship to your career, you can overcome unexpected career obstacles and react quickly to opportunities.

In this guide, you'll learn about the changes to modern work and how to approach your career as if it were a startup company using three entrepreneurship tactics. We’ll supplement Hoffman and Casnocha’s strategies with those of other business professionals and provide suggestions on how to apply their strategies to your career.

What is the key to success? It's hard to tell when so much success advice is contradictory: Should you be kind, or is being nice for losers? Should you spend every waking hour at work, or focus on work-life balance? In Barking Up the Wrong Tree, peak performance expert Eric Barker examines the research on every option—and shares what he believes are the secrets to success.

In this guide, you'll learn why context is king—in other words, why the rules for success depend on who you are—and examine interpersonal relationships, reviewing the importance of kindness, networks, and your attitude towards success. We'll also present Barker's views on persistence and hard work, namely why you need to stick to some things and quit others, and how you can achieve the ideal balance of work and play. Along the way, we'll examine how Barker’s ideas compare with those of other thought leaders and introduce even more ways to implement his suggestions.

In The One Thing, real estate entrepreneur Gary Keller argues that the key to extraordinary success is focusing daily on the “One Thing” that’s most important for achieving your goal, rather than scattering yourself in many directions. Keller and co-author Jay Papasan explain how to determine your goal or life purpose, then focus intensely on getting there, while avoiding pitfalls such as multitasking, relying on an unprioritized to-do list, thinking too small, misunderstanding willpower and discipline, and neglecting your personal life. When you know and focus exclusively on the most important thing every day, everything else falls into place. Extraordinary focus on One Thing brings extraordinary success.

If you haven’t thought about your inevitable death today, Jodi Wellman suggests it’s time to start. In her book You Only Die Once, Wellman champions the principle of memento mori—the intentional recognition of our mortality—as the key to leading a better life. According to Wellman, regularly meditating on your mortality motivates you to live more deliberately and meaningfully, balancing vitality and meaning.

In this guide, we’ll explain why Wellman argues that contemplating death will help you live a better life. We’ll then discuss what it means to live a good life and how to reflect critically on the life you’re living, before outlining Wellman’s steps to improve the quality of your life right away. We’ll also provide additional commentary on the history of memento mori, different cultural perspectives on death, and insights from other experts in positive psychology, including Martin Seligman (Flourish) and Viktor Frankl (Man’s Search for Meaning).