Category: Productivity
This is about being effective with your time and being focused on the right things to do each day or at each stage.
It could overlap with PM when we talk about your time on a project.
It takes 10 Constraints and 1 Action to be Awesome
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Over the last few weeks we’ve covered a bunch of content out of my new book Analogue Productivity, which is all about bringing more value to your work by embracing the constraints of a pen and paper. To start there are 10 key constraints that I use when choosing a productivity system and getting awesome
If you want to get more done, plan your day based on energy
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Just like a muscle, our brains only have so much energy. We can’t sit and focus for hours without end. Most research shows us that we have about 50 minutes of focus followed by a 15 – 20 minute break. We can follow this cycle for around three hours and then we’re fried. We had
If you don’t write it down, you’ll never do it so stop being lazy
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One of the tenets of most productivity systems is that you need to capture everything. While I don’t go quite that far and truly capture everything, I capture most stuff. One of the best phrases I found to get this point across was written by Tom Clancy and said by his main character Jack Ryan.
Your Productivity System Doesn’t Matter If you Can’t Plan To NOW
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I said in the Key Concept of Making Decisions, that if I touch a task three times I force myself to do it that week or push it off to my next quarterly planning cycle. That quarterly planning cycle is where I ask myself this question. “Given the resources I have and the time I
If You Want to Ship Amazing Work You Need to Prioritize
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In any given day you have a number of tasks that could be done. They fall into one of a number of buckets. Most systems give you 4 different options. The four below are called an Eisenhower Matrix. Urgent and important Important, but not urgent Urgent, but not important Neither urgent nor important The first
If you Want to Be Productive You Have to Make Decisions
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I’ve already introduced this Key Concept when I talked about pushing problems off on future you. Tim Urban has a hilarious blog post on this type of procrastination as he talks about getting ready for his TED talk on…procrastination. It ends with February Tim needing to do all the work to get ready for the
Productivity Is About Doing The Work
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I almost made this into two different sections because there are two ways of looking at this key concept. First, it’s all your fault. There is very little that happens in your life where you don’t have some form of control. At the very least you have control over how you respond to the things
If You Want to Be Productive You have to Suck at Something
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The worst question my wife used to ask me was: “Did you get everything done today?” The answer was never yes which always meant that it was demoralizing to answer it. It was like my stupid statement: “The kids slept great last night…right.” No they didn’t I just sleep like a stone and that made
A New Productivity System Must Solve Problems
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The second key concept you need to embrace when you’re looking at your productivity management system is that you need to be solving a problem. Changing your system is a painful expensive process. You already know the keyboard commands for your current tools. You know where they don’t work well and have devised ways around
The Key Productivity Concept of Constraint
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One of the key ideas that I built my system on is constraints. It’s the reason I use a mostly analogue system for my task management. The idea is that by making it harder to write down some ideas, I’m forced to judge their worth right away. I can’t whip out my phone and jot
