Most productive people work at a pace that is fast to get stuff done but slow enough to identify most important things, work deliberately
Definition of productivity: how much you accomplish
Productivity requires three things: time, energy and attention
Laying the Groundwork
Where to Start
Need to be prductive with a purpose or values. Use values to motivate how to be productive
Challenge: Answer questions to make list of values
– What would you do with 2 more hours of leisure time?
– What productivity goals, or new habits/routines/rituals did you have in mind that you wnated to take on before reading book
– Ask why you like values
– When implementing a habit: would I regret doing more or less of this?
Not all Tasks are Created Equally
Best way to measure productivity: ask if I got done what I intended to?
Some tasks can help you accomplish more. These tasks are either meaningful or have large impact on work
Challenge:
1. Make a list of everything you’re responsible
2. Ask yourself: If you could just do one item on that list all day every day, what item would allow you to accomplish the most with the same amountof time? What item is most valuable?
3. Ask yourself: If you could do two more items, what would they be?
Three Daily Tasks
Rule of 3: Find 3 things you want to have accomplished at end of day. Do the same for the week
Ready for Prime Time
Biological Prime Time: time of day when you have most energy
Spend your BPT doing high-impact tasks.
Most productive people don’t just manage time; they also manage their attention and their energy
Work on lowest-impact and shallow tasks on non-BPT times
Challenge: keep a time log of your hourly energy levels. Must make sure to have small, frequent meals throughout the day and wake up naturally.
– Check how much time is used procrastinating
Wasting Time
Cozying Up to Ugly Tasks
The more unattractive a task, the more likely you re to put it off. There are 6 main task attributes that make procrastination more likely:
1. Boring
2. Frustrating
3. Difficult
4. Unstructured
5. Lacking in personal meaning
6. Lacking in intrinsic awards
Usually, the high-impact tasks have a combo of the above procrastination triggers.
To make unappealing task more appealing, structure the task to address each of the 6 procrastination triggers
How to make procrastination productive:
1. Keep procrastination list: Whenever you feel that you want to procrastinate, refer to list
2. List the costs before you procrastinate
3. Just get started on a task, and they will seem less aversive
Challenge: next time you procrastinate something, think of triggers and flip them
Meet Yourself…From the Future
If you are not in touch with your future self, you will often agree to unproductive tasks/projects and will regret it later
When you are planning with the Rule of 3, make sure you think of yourself at the end of the day and the end of the week.
Why the Internet is Killing Your Productivity
The Internet is often tempting you away from high-impact tasks
Best way to stop Internet: disconnect. Turn off WiFi, put limits on phone, keep phone in different room
Ex: make a ritual to not use phone from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m.
Challenge: Disconnect from Internet for 30 minutes
The End of Time Management
The Time Economy
If you want to become more productive, managing your time should be less important than managing energy and attention
Time management only becomes important once you realize how much energy and attention you have in a given day and you can define what you want to accomplish. Ex: planning out whole day is great if you can also account for attention and energy
Working Less
Controlling the amount of time you spend on a task lets you control the amount of attention and energy you dedicate to a certain task
By setting less time on a task, you will expend more focus and energy on a task and create a sense of urgency around the task. This also flips some of the procrastination triggers
Working long hours doesn’t have much productivety gains. Instead, you will feel more BUSY because you are doing non-important tasks
Energy Enlightenment
Schedule important tasks around the biological prime time so that you can bring your A game to the task. Block off the BPT for vital tasks and don’t let silly things distract you during your time.
Even though you may have planned out your day, it is ultimately dependent on your energy levels. Be flexible and don’t plan too carefully as you can never predict your energy level for every single hour
Don’t be too structured either, need to have some free time
Manager’s schedule: traditional one-hour blocks for meetings and appointments.
Maker’s schedule: less scheduled. Can be more free.
Schedule free time/downtime as you will have more time.
Cleaning House
Make maintenance days: collect all the low-return tasks (cutting nails, cleaning the house, grocery shopping etc.) and do it all at once.\
– Don’t have to chunk all on one day but it is advisable
Can make maintenance tasks useful:
– Do them with someone else
– Listen to a podcast/audiobook
– Call someone during your task
– Do tasks mindfully
– Think about nothing to help mind wander
Don’t have to make low-return maintenance tasks perfect
The Zen of Productivity
The Zen of Productivity
Low return tasks are easier to work on, but you must decrease the attention, time and energy you spend on them
Allows you to spend more time on high-return tasks and come up with better ideas.
Frees up space for attentional freedom so you can have great ideas (eg. shower ideas)
Shrinking the Unimportant
Parkinson’s Law: your work expands to fit the amount of time you have avaliable for it
Eliminate the most low return tasks: low return meetings, phone calls, tasks/projects that dont use your unique talent or skill, low value projects
Pay attention to how much time you are spending on low-return tasks and then put limits on it. Eg: social media —> check only at certain times of the day
Can take vacations from unimportant tasks such as setting an automatic autoresponder on your email
Removing the Unimportant
To calculate how much your time is worth: how much would I be willing to pay in order to buy back one hour of my life?
Can hire a virtual assistant to take care of tasks that are unimportant
Say no to things that aren’t valuable: rank the task from 1 - 100 in terms of value/meaningful. Only do it if the ranking is 90 >
Look at where most of your low-return tasks are from: the commitment is most likely low-return as well
Challenge: calculate the valeu of your time
Quiet Your Mind
Emptying Your Brain
The more you get out of your head, the more clearly you will think. Our brain is not designed to remember everything. That is why we use calendars, to-do lists and shopping lists
Brain dump: list everything that you need to get done. These things often create a lot of pressure and stress in our brain (Zeigarnik effect)
– Keep a notepad or app to help capture everything that comes in your mind.
Workflow: write notes. Every 2/3 days, review the notes and add to to-do list/calendar
Waiting-for list: A list of everything you are waiting on. Review with brain dump notes and sync. Useful if you are able to divide it into categories (Home, Owed, Email, etc.)
Projects: keep a seperate note for each project. On Maintenance days, look at project notes and add to task list and intentions for the week
Worry list: list of everything you are worrying about. Can review every day if you feel that things are spiralling out of control
Should clear out notes on maintenance days
Can keep notepads everywhere to help store ideas
Simpler passwords: make code for every website (eg. make letter to left) and add a signature series of letters, numbers and symbols
Don’t need to follow everything, just make sure you externalize
Rising Up
Everything in your life can be categorized into the following hotspots: mind, body, emotions, career, finances, relationships, fun (name it yourself). List all your commitments in your hotspots
Every week, look at your hotspots and think how much time you spent in each one and what to focus on next week. Some questions to ask:
– What to do I need to spend more time?
– What did I spend too much time last week?
– What do I need to schedule/do next week
– What do I have to be mindful of next week?
– Unresolved issue?
– Opportunities in any of the hotspots?
– Obstacles that will get in the way of my goals next week?
– Am I going in the right direction with all my commitments?
– Are there any commitments I have add/remove/shrink/expand?
– What did I knock out of the park last week?
Can tilt in the short run to focus on certain hotspots.
Make list of all projects around hotspots
Challenge: make scannable list of hotspots
Making Room
Brain seesaws between two modes: wandering mode or central executive mode. Need to have balance (carve out time to specifically let mind wander)
Usually, wandering brains will help us have “shower thoughts” which can be incredibly useful
Can help wandering brain by putting yourself in environment that encourages wandering (nature walks, reading, boring tasks)
The Attention Muscle
Becoming More Deliberate
Work more deliberately on weekly and daily business that are high-return tasks
Three parts of attention muscle: central executive , focus, awareness
Attention Hijackers
Use smartphone for only an hour a dayor turn off alerts and notifications. Remember, smartphones exist for our convenience, not for the convenience of people that are messaging us
The more attention a task has, the longer it takes to recover from interruptions
Often memory takes a hit when we cater to notifications
20 second rule: keep anything that you find distracting 20 seconds away. Enough temporal distance to prevent distraction (eg. put phone in another room, desserts at the bottom of the freezer)
The Art of Doing One Thing
Multitasking feels incredible but you are not accomplishing much. They hijack the dopamine pathways of the brain and makes it hard to remove
Hard to single-task, but you can start small. Set a timer for half an hour to focus on only one thing and gradually increase timer. Other tips:
– Pomodoro timing: Work on one thing for 25 minutes, 5 minute break. Do this 4 times and then take a longer break (15 minutes)
– Actively listen
– Eat quietly and alone and you will create attentional space around food, enhancing taste
Challenge: do just one thing for 15-30 minutes
The Meditation Chapter
Mindfulness: the art of deliberately doing one thing at a time
While it may seem like the antithesis of productivity, mindfulness helps carve out attentional space to focus and become more productive
Meditation helps you step back and work deliberately. How to:
– Find somewhere quiet. Sit upright and close eyes. Focus on breath(in and out). Don’t control, just observe
– Must bring attention to breath. You will do this repeatedly but this builds attention muscle
Before you do anything important or make decisions, take a quick self-check
Taking Productivity to the Next Level
Refuelling
Always eat food that will give you lasting energy
Make incremental changes to diet than suddenly changing, esp. if you are aiming to drop fat. Usually, incremental changes are less scary and more likely to stick around
Eat for productivity: eat more unprocessed food and stop eating when youre full
Drinking for Energy