Productivity is a Formula

Productivity has always felt like an emotion to me.  It’s something you “feel” more so than something you “are.”

But productivity is more logical than that.  It’s a formula that anyone can crack open for gold.  The formula has six different factors.  Finding the right balance of these has unlocked significant gains in my ability to manage my time well and make meaningful strides toward my goals.

They are:

Productivity = Di + Pl + Pr + L + R + Do

The main input of the productivity equation is focus.  Focus is a budget: allocating it to the right activities will make you more productive.  Focusing on the wrong items, or too much in one area, can sink your effectiveness quickly.

Distractions (Di)

Definition: Any positive or negative ideas that consume your focus that isn’t one of the other five factors in the equation.

Some distractions are positive, like family time or mental breaks, but most – like television – are not.  James Clear talks about the importance of crafting an environment that promotes better behavior, giving a three-step blueprint for achieving it:

  1. Automate good decisions: find objects that make decisions on your behalf, like smaller plates or apps that force you to focus.
  2. Get in the flow: put things in your way to make it more natural to keep good habits.  This could be keeping nothing on your desk but your work materials and water or placing some dumbbells in the doorway you need to “lift” to pass through.
  3. Subtract negative influences: add as much friction toward making “bad” choices as possible.  This is the classic “put your phone on the other side of the room” trick.

Distractions matter when you’re trying to be productive.  There is a time and place for “bad” habits, and that’s not what we’re talking about here.

Planning (Pl)

Definition: Figuring out how to approach, prioritize, and organize your work toward a purpose.

Every Sunday night for the last few years I’ve followed a five-step process for planning my week:

  1. Reflect on last week.  Figuring out how well I fared in my goals, distractions, and planning.
  2. Identify new weekly goals.  What should I accomplish this week? 
  3. Review my calendar for critical events.  Schedule (or unscheduled) anything that needs attention.
  4. Plan details of the days.  I try and outline the main outcomes for each day of the week to shape my direction.  It’s a lot easier to wake up and tackle a predetermined list than to figure out what to do when I’m ready to start working.
  5. Close all outstanding emails.  I don’t have an inbox zero, but I try to reply and widdle the list down to a smaller level.  Big points to finding things to Unsubscribe from.

Process Development (Pr)

Definition: Building predetermined routines, automation, and standards for various elements of work.

These are your systems for actually getting work done.  They can include different digital tools, subscriptions (like ChatGPT or Midjourney), weekly planning meetings, meeting agenda templates, and anything else that reduces your time to make decisions or accomplish work.

Process development helps you build shortcuts to success.

They’re automatic behaviors you engage in that support faster, more efficient work.  My personal favorite is Tetheros – the tool I built.  I run all my side hustles, main business, and even family things through it.

Learning (L)

Definition: Improving your skills and understanding of concepts.

Learning is an investment of time that raises your productivity – usually later.

When I launched the Armatage Candle Company YouTube channel, I knew nothing about video editing.  The first few videos would take 2-3 days to complete after capturing the footage.  Besides knowing nothing about video production and editing, I also didn’t have good equipment.

This was learning through trial and error.  And those long days of frustrated video editing taught me how to look for good tools (because I knew what I hated about the process) and where I can improve in the next video.  

Another form of learning is traditional education.

For example, I’ve taken a variety of courses on LinkedIn Learning or YouTube to understand concepts like accounting or programming.  These are a complete waste of time if you don’t immediately apply what you learn to something valuable.

Learning is an investment of time that pays off in productivity later.

Resting (R)

Definition: Taking time to re-energize and reflect on progress.

Resting and Distractions are cousins, but the main difference in each is how energy is returned by the activity.  I’ve learned a lot of this is based on how introverted or extroverted you happen to be.

Regardless of how you feel about crowds, an important part of Resting is reflection.  When you spend all your time grinding out work, if you don’t check your trajectory out every once in a while you might be headed off course.

Steve Jobs said, “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.”

Nothing can stop you if you check your dots frequently and keep your battery charged.

Doing (Do)

Definition: Executing the plans to produce meaningful results.

At some point you actually have to get the work done.  Productivity is mainly defined by Doing because nothing else matters if nothing gets done.

This is my biggest complaint with tools like Notion or Clickup: they make over-engineering attractive.  When you spend more time in Process Development than Doing, you’ll feel productive but you won’t have the results to show for it.

Progress is better than perfection.  Balance the Productivity equation to tilt the scale in your favor.