It’s not trivial to be productive when most of the tools and environments we’re using to be productive are chock-full of distractions. As I’m typing this my two sons are determined to hoover up at least a little bit of paternal attention, the cat simply must be on top of my desk and the morning mail flood is just starting with multiple calendar notifications, newsletters and correspondence on current projects coming in, especially the stuff from further east where people already had a lot of coffee.
Thankfully, all these circumstances are the byproduct of my bad timing and access control while writing. Morning pre school rush hour is a bad time to start a blog post, and I left the studio door wide open to cats and boys. It does provide the perfect way to kick things off and talk about productivity and how to do it right.
I’m not telling you this because I got it all together. Au contraire. It took many long years of experimentation, great mentors and a lot of patience by the people around me to get these good practices together. I practice time management because I am naturally chaotic, better at starting than at finishing and very easily distracted. Nor am I always perfectly consistent in practicing all of this. It is very much a matter of fall down eight times, get up nine times. And that’s key. Doing all of this will make a difference like day and night, but not overnight. Stay with it, make it your own, and improve on it, and it will lead to great things.
There are a couple of good practices I have to be productive. Feelings, time, tools, settings, habits and principles. I’ll outline them fully in a series of subscriber-exclusive posts, so please do subscribe to get all the goodness. This free version contains an unabridged first section, and for the subsequent ones an overview only.
Feelings
What, feelings? Yes, feelings. This is one of my principles (which are mostly discussed elsewhere), but this one is so important it gets its own section. My experience of reality, and yours, is largely coloured and controlled by feelings. The ones we want and the ones we want to avoid. The ones we want to engender in others and the ones we try not to trigger. Feelings.
Cherish and chase the feelings that are the *result* of your actions, interactions, thoughts, habits, whatever.
If you want to be more successful, productive, and experience flow, cherish and chase the feelings that are the *result* of your actions. The feelings you have helped cause and create. The fruits, if you will, of your choices. Those feelings are the reason to do what you do. They are our experience of existence as a worthwhile endeavour. The ‘after workout’ feeling. The ‘after cooking and eating healthy food’ feeling. My personal favourite, the feeling of having quickly and elegantly solved a problem. Those are all feelings that are the result of actions.
There are also the feelings that *cause* you to (want to) do certain things, and not others. Screw those feelings. White noise of the monkey brain. Letting those feelings take control instantly transforms you from the conductor of your life to the audience. Of your own life. The passive participant. Doing something useless or self destructive ‘because you felt like it’? Not doing what you had set out to do ‘because you didn't feel like it’? Yeah. Those feelings. They do not matter, *at all*. You do. Your life experience does. And by focussing on the outcome feelings over the randomly occurring feelings, you get to shape your life experience to a large degree.
There is great power in doing nothing at all, if you want to get things done.
Of course they are still there, the monkey brain feelings, messing with your mojo. What to do about them? There are many schools of thought on this. Meditation, affirmations, you name it, someone wrote a book on it. My personal approach is twofold: control at a macro level and patience. I cannot control my feelings on a moment to moment basis, but I can control my diet, bedtime, exercise and so on. By consistently putting my mind and body through good practice described below my mental game is a lot better. The other one is patience. If I’m fried and all I want to do is give up discipline and play videogames or watch TikTok, I wait it out. I just wait, because the feeling passes. I don’t have to act on it. I can feel it, acknowledge it, not try to repress it, and just sigh. And wait. Like you would for a toddler babbling about Pokémon. It passes soon enough. When I notice a lot of negative or distracting thoughts, I know I exceeded my capacity to engage with my world in useful ways and need to rest and recharge. There is great power in doing nothing at all, if you want to get things done (eventually).
Time
My day is divided into several ‘timezones’ which are dedicated to a type of activity that suit my energy level, focus and possibilities typical of that time of day. This way I minimise the waste of driving during creative time, trying to write during zombie time, etc etc. Time ‘slots’ or timeboxes are a highly validated way to engage effectively, and are also a great thing to teach your kids. Some people use many small ones (like one hundred 5 minute blocks for an 8-ish hour workday), I use a few big ones. The calendar is for the ‘hard landscape’ of what needs to be done at a certain time and place, and for meetings. Meetings are always planned with a space in between, and notification on time to prepare beforehand and process outputs afterwards. And for coffee.
The essence of time management is choosing what *not* to do and optimise ruthlessly for outcomes you find important. There is always more to do, but the limit is you, your time, your options. That is your playground. This is a recurring theme in the following sections: Choose what you want to *achieve* and then optimise for that. Get the best stuff for frictionless productivity, make sure you are in the right setting to do what you need to do. Use time appropriately. Don’t catch up with your best friend while helping your kids with homework. Do catch up with your best friend when you are driving. It’s not about the task list, or the calendar, or the constraints you face. It’s about choosing, given all of the above, and executing on that choice without looking back. At least you will have gotten something done :)
My full schedule including all time block considerations is available to paid subscribers to this Substack. Please consider upgrading to get the unabridged version of this and subsequent sections, or give a gift subscription to a friend!Tools
My tools are meant to create, connect and process with minimal friction. I have happily spent a lot on tools that let me type, record and meet faster, longer and with more enjoyment because it increases the quality and quantity of my output. Even a 250 euro keyboard becomes viable if you produce thousands of words each day, even though, I admit, it sounds bonkers. It ties in to the next part on settings. The value of tools is in enabling your productivity and creativity, small optimisations translate to large benefits over time.
One of my favourite tools is x.ai, an online service that allows you to get your meetings scheduled for you. It really, really helps cut down on those 7 reply e-mail threads trying to set up a 45m meeting. It integrates with my 10-odd calendars, Zoom and other tools to make scheduling fairly painless and very representative for an innovation maven. My x.ai URL is https://x.ai/calendar/sharpestthought, in case you want to meet ;)
To keep on top of my task list I prefer FacileThings, a great SAAS tool for the Getting Things Done™ productivity method. It really enforces the process in a very good way, has a nice clean interface and supports integration with calendar, Evernote and cloud storage systems. My previous favourite, IQTELL, is sadly defunct, but it’s customisation options and e-mail integration were second to none. That was hardcore GTD. FacileThings is a lot more fly-by-wire, and better for it, really, for most people. I certainly use the tool every day and find the guided weekly review process invaluable, since that is really one of the cornerstone habits of GTD.
Paid subscribers see all productivity tools with longer reviews Settings
One of the key takeaways of the whole Getting Things Done™ method by David Allen for me is the concept that your context controls what you can do at any given time, so you have to optimise your ‘contexts’ for productivity. (By the way, David was kind enough to coach me one day through the good offices of Arjen Broere of Meereffect. It was really awesome.) Think about the outcomes you want to achieve and the setting in which you work towards them, and optimise.
Controlling your settings to create a frictionless environments for whatever productivity means to you. My office setting is highly optimised for writing and communication because that is a large part of my work. My studio setting is layered on top of that to allow almost instant recording of audio and video, without a lot of set-up or configuration. This way there is near zero impediment to creativity, and I record a lot more than when there was more setting up to do beforehand.
On the road, ‘ controlling your setting’ means carrying stuff that is fast, portable, lightweight etc. to be productive anywhere. I’m considering an iPad for mobile productivity over a laptop, but have not pulled the trigger yet.
One of my favourite ways to get to know someone new during a meeting is to take a walk together and talk on the way. This helps conversation flow more naturally. It is also more compatible with pandemic related safety constraints then huddling together in an indoor space for an extended period of time.
Paid subscribers see a detailed description of each settingHabits
Habits are just ways to reliably obtain certain outcomes without having to plan, self-motivate and think it through each time. Habits take real effort to create, but are absolutely worth it. They *are* you when your brain is otherwise occupied. Habits that create good outcomes are like brushing your teeth every day. Any single day barely matters but a lifetime of good dental hygiene makes a world of difference to your quality of life. Similarly, all these habits add up to something over time, but only when done consistently.
Habits carry interest. Good ones are like savings accounts adding up to huge value over time. Bad ones are like loans, that constantly drag on you and lead to massive indebtedness.
Failing to build great habits means all things in life either deteriorating or taking far more effort to keep at a reasonable level. Productivity, health, finances and taking care of the people and things most important to you all require good habits. Do not underestimate the power of habits, both good and bad. Habits carry interest. Good ones are like savings accounts adding up to huge value over time. Bad ones are like loans, that constantly drag on you and lead to massive indebtedness.
The habit that has the best leverage for creating other good habits is keeping a journal and writing in it consistently. As of today I’m on a near-one year streak of 359 consecutive days of keeping a journal. Even on March 15th when I was admitted to the hospital with meningitis I created a one line entry, just to keep my streak intact. Seriously, the making and keeping of streaks is magic for involving your fickle ‘monkey brain’ self into the process of building habits. By configuring yourself to keep a journalling habit you can then turn that into the self-coaching necessary to build other great habits. My wife totally changed her life by working out every day. Pick what works for you, stick with it, and build it out into other areas of your life.
Unlock the description of my four key habits as paid subscriberPrinciples
To paraphrase Ray Dalio, principles are heuristics for dealing with situations that occur repeatedly in a consistent way, and ‘automate’ much of the otherwise difficult, case based decision making. A principle can be super pragmatic and personal. For example “I’m changing my diet to intermittent fasting (no breakfast) whenever I weigh more than 80 kilos at more than 18% body fat”. It can of course be more business related. “I will let go of colleagues who fail to contribute to an inclusive culture in the workplace or cause fear and distres to others” (Also known as the ‘no assholes’ rule) has served me well. In the first section I elaborated on my first principle on feelings, and which ones to seek and which ones to ignore. Here I will expand on a few other important principles.
Sleep when tired, work when inspired
One of my principles, which is admittedly much easier to implement now in corona time, is “Sleep when tired, work when inspired”. When I’m not at my best I go take a nap (actually I just snoozed for 15 minutes). When I feel inspired to write, I’ll happily loose sleep or drop whatever else I’m doing to go write. I need schedules and task lists to contain my chaos, but all work and no improv makes Jack a dull boy. So when it flows, flow with it. When it does not, recharge. A very powerful principle that works best on the ‘other side’ of being organised. Going with the flow, without having time management systems in place first, leads to absolute chaos.
Why is this a principle and not a habit? Because it applies situationally, rather than by default or on a schedule.
Other principles, including business and investment principles, are discussed in a separate series for paid subscribersThe main thing is to figure out and apply your own principles. Having a good heuristic is not only useful for yourself, it really simplifies expectation management with your personal and business environment because you reliably handle certain things a certain way.
People
Other people are the world’s best kept secret and the answer to most of the problems you might have. Creating and maintaining relationships is both the most basic and the most advanced skill you can have. One of the key things is to always contribute more than you are taking out of a relationship, or at least try your level best to do so without subjecting yourself to exploitation.
According to the ancient saw you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. I’m not sure it holds up. These days, it means I’m 40% young child. Actually, it holds up! I *am* sure that the best advice I can give you for your professional life is this:
Get into the best band you can, even if you are starting out as the worst player in that band. Relentlessly seek out people who are smarter, more experienced, calmer, wiser and more focused than you currently are and seek to work with them. Then, one day, when someone asks you for mentorship, go pay it forward.
One of the key things about privilege is access. The people you get to spend time with, who help you and accept you as peer determine a very large part of your success. This is true even if you do everything else right (or wrong). I have been extremely lucky in this sense. Be very aware of inclusion, grateful when you have it, generous when you can provide it. It is absolutely key to the outcomes in your life and that of other people.
The full version of this section includes some key insights which helped me recognise what was actually going on in many professional settings and make the most of it. 'Organisational literacy' is an incredibly valuable skill.On that note, it is also key to the outcome of my new content-based business that this stuff gets some traction. If I added value for you here today I would appreciate it if you could spread the word and forward this e-mail to three other people who may find some value in it. Thank you, and see you next time!