Protect your mornings and other productivity tips

If this mailer does not render correctly, please enable images or view online   Advertise Unsubscribe

Invite Friends CEO Picks - The most popular editorials that have stood the test of time! Protect your mornings and other productivity tips Some good thoughts about optimizing your work productivity in this article. Here's a highlight. Whatever your situation, protect your mornings! I'm certain this isn't checking your email or social media. I'm blown away by how many people schedule things like meetings in the mornings. Nothing could be worse for peak performance and creativity. Schedule all of your meetings for the afternoon, after lunch. Don't check your social media or email until after your 3 hours of deep work. Your morning time should be spent on output, not input. If you don't protect your mornings, a million different things will take up your time. Other people will only respect you as much as you respect yourself. Protecting your mornings means you are literally unreachable during certain hours. Only in case of serious emergency can you be summoned from your focus-cave.

Continued here

How HotelTonight Went From Burning Millions to Planning an IPO Sam Shank, 43, (CEO of HotelTonight) was like a lot of other startup CEOs, flush with cash from earlier rounds and so focused on the day-to-day he didn't notice that VCs had suddenly become parsimonious. After a painful but quick round of layoffs, he told his employees that there would be no more layoffs and that the company was aiming to become profitable by August without killing growth. Employees started making decisions based on whether it improved the company's earnings. They slashed marketing, stopped wasting money on discount sites and coupons, and added features that led to more app users booking rooms. The company cut its annual infrastructure costs by $500,000 - a 40 percent drop - by renegotiating licensing deals, moving from one software platform to another and so on. One employee won a weekly "Frugal Not Cheap" award by simply telling a credit card processor they wanted to pay less, saving $8,000 per month. Every week, Shank updated the company on its burn rate, and every morning, employees got an e-mail with such key metrics as gross bookings value, year-over-year growth and gross margin. HotelTonight turned profitable a few months later..