hello and welcome back to the channel in this video we're going to talk about five Investments be it Time Investments or money Investments that have massively boosted my productivity and earning potential first up we're going to start with my trusty whiteboard this purchase was made very shortly after reading the book The 12we Year by Brian Morgan really good book the author explains how the main barriers that hold us back from earning our worth isn't our lack of knowledge it isn't our lack of skill it isn't our lack of expertise that we tend to think it
is it's often our lack of execution and I know this has definitely been the case for me i' get stuck in the planning and the analysis stage so often overthinking things and then struggle to take the necessary action steps I always found that it was easier to stay in the comfort zone of planning than to actually execute on my ideas I knew what I needed to do but I just kept finding ways to avoid doing it so I bought a whiteboard and on it I break down my 12we goal for the quarter into this week's
action steps and just by having this up on my wall as I'm working having this visual tangental representation of my priorities and action steps and seeing those tasks laid out in front of me every single day as I work has made me a lot more focused on the right things and then at the end of the week I review where I'm at tick things off and then spend some time planning for the next week and writing up the next week's action plan I've just found that having a whiteboard has really helped me develop an execution
mindset the structure and the accountability that has come from having a whiteboard has definitely cut my project completion time and there for increasing my hourly rate that's the first purchase the next one that's made a huge difference are 1 second are these headphones these were around £220 $280 but After experiencing the power of noise cancelling technology I'll never be able to go back to regular earphones I don't know how I spent so long without having noise cancelling earphones and the reason why these are so effective well have you ever found yourself turning off the radio
when you're lost or finding a hard to concentrate or read something when someone around you or next to you is talking really loudly it wasn't until I started using these noise cancelling headphones that I realized how much all the background noise around me was draining my cognitive resources and my ability to focus when I put my headphones on I just enter into this peaceful distraction-free environment that is in full Focus so and there's some really interesting research on how athletes use pre-performance routines to help them get into a state of deep focus for Optimal Performance
for me putting on these noise cancelling headphones is like my own pre-work ritual most of the time I don't even play any music through them I just put them in turn my phone on airplane mode close down all the tabs on my laptop except for the one that I'm working on and that's my routine and I've noticed on the days that I don't do one of those three steps my productivity just plummets it takes me 5 hours to do what it would take me otherwise 1 hour to finish definitely definitely recommend investing in noise cancelling
headphones if you haven't already number three and this is more of a Time investment than a money investment and it's stacking old skills with new unique skills increasing your skill set will increase your pay but the math of skill stacking is that you want 1+ 1 to equal three so to explain using my own career every time I made a p I've intentionally tried to pair unique skills together so I started in the corporate world in back office within a bank crunching numbers analyzing data I thought this would be a solid career choice but I
hated my role so I stayed in the division just to complete my accountancy qualification I knew that would carry credit ability later on and then I made a lateral move into strategy there I learned how to structure my ideas effectively learned about front office products through those skills I moved into front office where I learned about communication the art of persuasion and then my latest career piver has allowed me to leverage my entire skill stack from my corporate career while adding new skills that aren't usually paired with the existing skills I had so skills like
copywriting how to communicate through social media these are all together with the skills I had a unique solution that has increased my potential for earning even more skill stacking is about drawing upon everything you've learned to make yourself a unique solution today this doesn't diminish the importance of specialist knowledge but the more skills you can pair and the more unique those pairings are the higher your earning potential one of the most important skills I believe everyone should have to increase their earning potential is curiosity being a constant learner will keep you relevant and will help
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link in the description and with the same link you'll also get 20% off of the annual premium subscription number four my bigger monitor I've always been used to two or three screens in banking the sales and trading floor had setups with three screens and almost every other division had at least two cognitive science research shows that our brains process information better when we can view related content side by side we're able to take in and break down information from loads of sources simultaneously when they're all within our view and it allows us to make faster
connections spot patterns more easily and switch between tasks a more easily and with greater fluency research has consistently shown that using multiple screens can increase productivity by 20 to 50% compared to using just a single screen and although I don't have a triple monitor screen I don't think it's necessary I found that just having a single larger 27in display has allowed me to easily view two windows side by side I keep my research materials open on one side and then I write and analyze on the other without constantly having to toggle between the tabs or
Shuffle Windows around the only cavier is that you do need to make sure you have a big enough desk to accommodate this larger screen my previous desk was really narrow so the screen was really close up to my face and I have to keep turning left and right to be able to see one side of the screen and then another now getting a bigger screen and a screen that is big but not too big has made all the difference in allowing me to take full advantage of the bigger screen real estate and number five tombstones
in the world of Finance we have something called tombstones these are physical glass or metal plaques that were awarded when you closed a significant deal or you achieved a major Milestone when someone got a tombstone they put it on their table they'll put it in the office they'll post about it on LinkedIn they would include it on their CV they would make sure that that Tombstone was known about and while we may not have literal tombstones in our day-to-day lives we can create our own digital tombstones to build a strong personal brand and thereby increasing
our rate and earning potential and it's very small things that compounded add to your overall value so posting on Linkin about events you've organized or things that you've LED outside of work sharing your work on a personal website on a Blog on social media channels participating as a speaker or a panelist at industry events as I've started accumulating more of these digital tombstones so I've been featured in Publications I do corporate talks I have my professional qualifications I always mention these small tombstones that I'm adding to my credentials list which have allowed me to charge
more and more or higher rates for doing the same thing that I did for far less a few years ago it's a compounding effect the more tombstones you can accumulate the more leverage you have to command better opportunities and a higher pay so those are fire Investments that have massively boosted my income and productivity if you like this video you may also enjoy this video right here on nine things I stopped buying to make more money enjoy
