Productivity
Culture taught us this is important.
It also taught us that we should strive for it. #sad
For me it makes sense to be productive not to be able to always do more, but rather to do the things I have to do faster so that I can get on with my life.
Pomodoro technique
The practise of breaking productive work into chunks typically of 25m with short breaks of 3-5m in between. For every 4 chunks you do a longer break of 15-30m.
Keeping track of and reviewing the Pomodoro sessions gives us a metric for work done and a feedback loop that can affect the quality of the sessions.
Maniac week
Almost as a challenge this is about trying to cram in as many hours of work as you can in a week semingly for good sport. The links below contain some really good advice for how to go about doing something like this and not die.
- Nick Winter’s Blog | The 120-Hour Workweek - Epic Coding Time-Lapse
- Bethany’s Maniac Week - Beeminder Blog
“Smoothly ratcheting targets”
Instead of fixed streaks that count back forever and fixed interval goals like:
write three times a week
use movable windows, rephrasing as
have written three times during the last 7 days
Matuschak also mentions using precise microtargets that are measurable and of course holding yourself accountable to them.
Case studies
Nat Eliason
- Works a lot
- Planning in spreadsheet copy daily items to system every day
- Few meetings. Only on Mondays and Wednesday and not before 12
- Do top priority tasks before anything else
- Deep Work every day 8-12
- Minimise distractions
- Daily review: assess day, clear slate, plan tomorrow
- Also does weekly and monthly reviews
Ryan Kulp
- Track/schedule everything in calendar
- Only keep a few browser tabs open at a time, do not succumb to tab-hell
- Newsletters on Fridays only
- Reading in the mornings only
- Inbox zero
- Musk scheme: separate days for separate areas of interest (SpaceX and Tesla)
- Deep Work
- Careful use of free-time
- Changes in physical environment changes energy
- Say no most of the time to requests of time-spending
Synthesis
- Goals should be reflected in micro-level, use planning
- Prioritise and act acordingly
- Minimise distractions
- Use a review to establish a feedback loop
- Say no often
- Keep meetings few and far between
Links
- How to Be Really, Really, Ridiculously Productive - Nat Eliason
- How I Stay Productive - Ryan Kulp
- Your Productivity B-Roll - Ryan Kulp