Many people assume productivity involves hours of meditation, cold showers, and endless amounts of water. I’m sure there’s a significant amount of reward in being that disciplined, but I don’t find my productivity in guru-rituals.
What does it mean to be productive, though? Everyone’s answer is different, but for me it’s based on time spent working on high priority tasks. Productivity is about getting the right work done more than getting a lot of work done.
Quality over quantity. Working on something for 12 hours doesn’t matter if it isn’t meaningful.
I prefer a more natural approach to productivity instead of elaborate morning rituals and social media flexing. James Clear writes, “Environment is the invisible hand that shapes human behavior.” Productivity depends on how you structure your work area.
It also depends on time.
Our days need to be spent wisely because they don’t replenish, which leads to my fundamental belief about productivity: how you manage daily tasks dictates your success more than anything else in your life.
People who show up daily, with a plan anchored in a long-term vision, who limit wasted time on low-priority tasks, will inevitably be successful.
You need strong task management skills to make this happen. In this case, a “task” describes something to work on for a period of time. Anything from house chores to strategic planning fits into this definition.
My daily task management system is based on a set of principles:
Plan well
Imagine if a general told her army to just figure it out when they get to the battle. There would be mass chaos before defeat. It would be exhausting, and the army would eventually replace her with someone that understood the importance of a plan.
You are the CEO of your life. Just like business, you can split your time into working FOR the business and ON the business.
When you’re knee-deep in the weeds getting things done, this is your time working FOR the business. As important as it is, you won’t move toward your goals if you’re just reacting to the moment-to-moment stresses or chasing shiny things.
To plan well, you need to work ON the “business” of you. I suggest the following tactics:
Plan your day the night before
It’s easier to get out of bed and tackle the day when you don’t have to spend time figuring out what to do.
Following orders is easier than figuring out what the orders should be. Before you go to sleep, or at the end of the previous work day, review everything and map out an ideal version of the next day.
At a minimum, outline the very first thing you should work on when you start. The next morning there should be no debate about what you should be doing.
Eat the frog
Brian Tracy says that if you were supposed to eat a frog tomorrow, it might be one of the last things you want to do, but should actually be the first task of your day. It’s a gross and unpleasant activity (I assume) – something you’ll dread all day. Doing it first avoids wasting energy and willpower on worry and procrastination.
Frogs are things like phone calls, sensitive conversations, and hard-but-important tasks, and hopefully don’t involve eating any actual frogs.
Understand transitions
When you move from one task to another pay attention to the nature of each to avoid being distracted or burnt out.
Some activities “chain” well with each other: writing a blog post followed by creating social media content inspired by the writing. Others don’t: networking events followed by deep focused code.
Effective plans involve structuring your day to put activities together that use the same part of the brain and don’t require significant context switching. They also build reasonable amounts of time for shifting between the two ideas, which is sometimes related to literal travel between two points or a mental leap across the gap of creativity.
Build days that focus on one type of subject rather than forcing circus tricks on your brain with activities that don’t relate well to each other.
Use multiple mediums
You can use a lot of task management tools and still be productive, and you probably should.
“Complexity is the enemy of execution.”
Tony Robbins’ advice suggests that if you’re building a task management system that it should be simple and clear. I don’t think it means limiting yourself to a single source of truth for tasks.
Even though I founded and built a software product for task management, I use an average of seven different tools to keep track of what I’m working on every single day. That may sound complex, but it’s actually very simple and clear when you understand that each has a specific use with minimal overlap:
- Tetheros (software): Tracking big projects and organizing large tasks. The hub of my plans.
- Traditional notebook: Analog writing and planning tool when I need to be away from screens.
- Remarkable (digital notepad): Taking notes and recording action items when I’m in meetings or out and about and need a proxy to my other plans.
- Sticky notes: Contains the first few tasks of the day. I usually record these the night before and feature them on my desk to remind myself what I should work on right away.
- Whiteboard: The hub for my weekly plans. I have a box for every day of the week that I fill with events and desired outcomes for that day.
- Swipe File: What do you do when you’re far from home and need to remember something? I have a single Note on my phone that I record things like this in. At the end of each week I unload these items into another place, like Tetheros.
- Calendar: The king of managing events. I don’t use my calendar in any strange ways. It serves as the source of truth for everywhere I have to be. I’ll often copy these to the whiteboard for a quick, non-digital reference.
If a tool serves a valid purpose, it has a place in your system. Don’t be afraid to build a stack of different tools or try new ways to manage your daily tasks. Keep what works and ditch what doesn’t.
The productivity gurus of the internet would rather you suffocate in a single tool at your expense. Find what works for you instead.
Variety is the spice of life, after all.
Treat your week like your nutrition
Success is like going on a diet, but with less kale.
President Eisenhower wrote, “plans are worthless, but planning is everything.”
This applies to our weeks too.
Even though it’s important to approach each week with desired outcomes and structure, sometimes we’re too idealistic about how much we can get done or we severely under-plan and introduce temptations to waste time
Plans are essential for understanding the direction you want to head, but the ability to improvise and navigate each day is where the productivity war is won. With diets, the real battle happens in quiet moments: small snacks and large plates when no one is looking.
And like nutrition, it’s better to evaluate productivity by looking at long-term trends and behaviors instead of isolated moments. Anyone can have a bad day here or there, but if you’re stacking up more wins than losses you’re doing pretty well.
Look toward the average of your weekly outcomes and have a little grace. You aren’t always going to get it right.
Be intentional about your core working hours
We’re all wired differently.
I’m a morning person like my parents, but my wife isn’t. She does her best work in the deep recess of the evening whereas I thrive before sunrise.
The 5 AM club likes to shame people that sleep in, but they’re missing the point. It’s not about how long you work, or what time you get up, but how well you use your time that matters.
One of the best ways to improve the quality of your work is to learn what hours of the day you thrive in. Lock those times in and make them a priority.
Three hours of work during your peak period is more effective than three hours anytime else. Protect this time by limiting distractions, entering with a clear plan, and designing a work environment you can dominate in.
Develop extreme clarity around your priorities
How you spend your days, weeks, and years matters.
If you don’t have a set of short and long-term purposes in your life, there’s very little reason to worry about being productive. I’ve had boring stretches at work – even boring jobs – so being “productive” felt fraughtless.
Instead of wandering aimlessly, I made shifts in my life to figure out what I wanted and played the games I needed to play to get there.
Having extreme clarity about where I want to go, who I want to be, and the impact I want to make on the world is the anchor for my days. If you don’t know where you want to go you might accidentally end up there.
Every year, I spend at least one day focused entirely on what I want to do with my life. Our lives can change a lot in the course of a year. I revisit the existential question frequently to align myself with the newest version of myself and all that I’ve learned because chasing a plan that a younger, more ignorant version of myself created a long time ago might not still be what I want in life.
You don’t know what you don’t know, and that’s reason enough to spend time reflecting on the big things in life every once in a while.
I create objectives for five separate milestones:
- 15 years out: lofty, loose, but clear enough that I can see how the pieces need to fall to get there.
- 10 years out: we overestimate what we can do in a year, and underestimate what we can accomplish in a decade.
- 5 years out: includes far more detail, and establishes the most concrete version of where I want my life to be.
- 1 year: an annual plan addressing the major accomplishments and changes I want to see in my life.
- 6 months: very granular, often with actual metrics (weight, social media metrics, revenue goals, etc).
These objects remind me “why” I’m doing everything I am. Each day exists to support my life’s anchors.
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I’m actually very lazy. Anything that isn’t simple or easy probably isn’t going to get done. I’ve accepted this about myself, which is why thoughtful daily plans are paramount to moving forward.
The point of productivity is to efficiently move toward success, not to “be productive”. Productivity for productivity’s sake is a waste of time. Anyone who faults you for how you manage your time should be ignored until they’ve walked a mile in your shoes.