10 commandments on how to be productive so you can start working smarter instead of harder. A while back I wrote an email to myself with all the lessons I’ve learned throughout the years about productivity and working smarter. That email serves as a constant reminder when I am feeling unproductive or things are not working out the way they should.
Focus on Systems Instead of Goals
We are taught from an early age to pursue goals: get good grades, be in the starting team of a sport, get promoted at your job
- However, most goals are out of our control.
- In a system, you focus is on all the parts that you do control.
Automate Repetitive Tasks
List down all the tasks that you have to do recurrently every week, then find ways to automate them using apps or building your own system
- A common one across many industries is email – the “typical knowledge worker spends a third of their workweek processing email. Automating this can cut down on this amount of time spent.
Delegate the Non-Essential
Delegate everything that you’re not world class at or that someone can do better in a fraction of time or cost.
- Unless you have to develop a new skill, it’s always better to find someone already skilled at something to complete that task.
The Struggle Is the Process
When you’re behind, go home early. Rest and come back energized the next day.
- Embrace the struggle. It’s where breakthroughs come from. Focus on systems, as per rule #1, you will make progress in the long run.
Reserve Mornings for Deep Work
Our working memory, alertness, and concentration gradually improve a couple of hours after waking up, peaking at about mid-morning
- Take advantage of this state by scheduling your most important work for this period
- Focus on performing Deep Work, meaning you get to work free of distraction for a long period of time
Leverage the Compound Effect
When you focus on developing systems and work every day, your work compounds over time, developing exponential growth
- For example, if you read a couple of pages per day, you will start making connections between books and its lessons, and will have a full catalog of articles that your readers can enjoy, opening more ways to find you
Remove Distractions
Distractions can be divided into three major groups: physical, intangible, and people
- The first step of effective time management is to eliminate before optimizing.
- Minimize distractions in your daily life to make progress in meaningful work. Start by being aware of your distractions and then remove them.
Be Data-Driven
You should always make data-driven decisions. If you don’t, you choosing to go with your opinion with no facts to back it up.
- Start with the end goal of your experiment: find your peak-productivity time
- Draw up a hypothesis
- Design the experiment
- Enter data into a spreadsheet
- Run the experiment and collect data
- Analyze data and draw conclusions
Track and Measure Output, Not Input
Focus on the output, rather than the input
- Output differs from goals since we control all the variables
- A goal for your blog might be to get 500 subscribers in a month, but you don’t really control who sign-ups
- Knowing the difference between outcomes and goals is key to set realistic and attainable objectives
Live by the 80/20 Rule
Question yourself if your focus, time, and money is on things that generate the majority of the results.
- Are you focusing on tasks that bring the most output?
- Do you spend time on all your clients equally? Are you reserving most of it for the best clients that bring you the majority revenue? Are most of your distractions coming from a couple of sources?
