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What Is Productivity?

What is the best way to develop personalized productivity hacks?

  • There are lots of people who ask questions similar to "What's the best way to increase productivity?" The answers often fall into certain large buckets ("manage your email", "manage your time", "exercise", "meditate") and tend to be quite generic. So this is the meta-question. What's the best way to figure out for you personally what changes will have the biggest impact on your productivity? What tips can you share about figuring out when and why you're wasting time without realizing it?

  • Answer:

    For me, the first step to figuring out what will impact my productivity most positively is to figure what things have the biggest effects that stop me from being productive. Some possible productivity blocks would include: - Excess planning (a type of procrastination) - Excess reading productivity texts (another type of procrastination) - Other miscellaneous procrastination - Anxiety - Perfectionism - Lack of the means to do productive things - Too much "unproductive" stuff genuinely needs to be done - Not knowing what you should do to be productive on any one day - Not being motivated to be productive Whatever things have the biggest negative effect on your productivity have a large chance of being your low-hanging fruit here. Even if you can only partially alleviate the problem(s) you identify, you could have quite a good positive effect on your productivity. How to identify what's going on? One is just to think about it for a while ... what do you spend most of your time doing when you're unproductive? How do you feel when you're unproductive? If you're having trouble figuring it out, ask the people who are closest to you - they are often more aware than you of how you typically act! You could also set some alarms on your phone for a few days, maybe 4-6 during the part of the day when you want to be productive - whenever one goes off you write down what you're doing and how you're feeling, then go back and look at them all. After you do all of these, you'll probably have a better idea of what's holding you back. How to solve those different productivity blocks is a huge topic - way too big for a post like this - but most of them suggest their own answers I think. If you're anxious or perfectionist, work on being less so. If you're unmotivated or don't know what to do, figure out what your final goal is and work back from there. If there's a specific thing you do instead of being productive, find a way to stop yourself from doing that thing, and so on.

Ricky Buchanan at Quora Visit the source

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After reading countless books and trying to find the perfect system.  I was a bit bewildered with my own perceived lack of productivity.  I decided that after reading everything that I had read and listening to the audiobooks that I had listened too.  I should be able to make my own system that I am comfortable with.  I took a morning to review my work environment and really decided what were necessary actions for my day to day and what kinds of things were causing a lack of order and chaos.  I installed some really simple systems for what I considered to be dumb things.... like what to immediately do with the mail that came in everyday.   I decided to take a lot of small decisions out of my day by putting in simple routines that make things more automatic.  Everyone has their own favourite productivity books or theories...  I started to make a hybrid that suited my needs.  My Todo that I always keep beside me... has the following sections. Sections to be filled on my daily list. Date: For awareness I Feel: As I am starting the day I like to take a moment and consider where my head is... I anticipate: Is there anything that I can think of externally that is going to affect my day. I will for work: These are the things that I plan to do in a work day.  The list has 11 items.  The top item has a star beside it.  It is the most important thing that I will do in that day. The next 2 items are also priorities, marked with a circle.  Then I have 4 more, work items, these will usually be lower priority items that will  not take long to accomplish. I will for home: These are the things that I plan to at home for my family or house.  There are two items.(Clean the garage, pick up groceries, etc) I will for me: These are 2 items that I plan to do for myself. (work out, go for a walk or read about a certain subject) ** I try not to have any task to take longer than 30 mins, and I put an estimated time to complete beside each task. I won't: This is where I will put things that I don't want to do that day.  Maybe a habit I want to break or something that I know will suck my time and focus.  For example- I won't- Answer any questions on Quora I will later: I leave this spot blank in the morning and as I am working if something comes up and I know if I do it now it will derail me, I put it here. Example: Check scores of last nights game.  If I do that in the middle of a task... I will loose all productive momentum(Which is somethingI have learned that I need to protect) Notes and idea's: This is a blank space that I use for anything that pops up that I don't want to forget.  Maybe a task for tomorrow or another day. I take an Evernote snap shot at the beginning of the day and at the end of the day... so I can go back later and review. After reading the Checklist manifesto, I have also added some simple checklists to my day.  Simple.  Did you drink 2 glasses of water this morning? Protein in your breakfast? etc. I also now review my 5 year, 1 year, 1 month, 1 week goals on a regular basis. This sounds like a lot but... it is all really simple.  I am flexible and obviously fall off the horse... (Like I planned to spend 20 mins writing this!!) Keep it simple and design your productivity for your life.

Peter Hartlen

The way I look at improving personal productivity is a short iterative feedback loop. The focus is on learning how to be better. To keep things nice and generic, pick a few simple measurements, speed of feedback loop of completion etc. Then at the end of each loop, take the measurements, record them, and do a quick evaluation to understand how you can improve your performance based on your metrics. This evaluation can be as simple or as detailed as you want but its better to start simple. You will start to realise as you do this simple process, you will need new measurements to start understanding factors like motivation, and prioretisation of workload, dealing with distractions..... Your system will develop organically and quickly you discover your previous productivity failings. The advantage of this approach is its your discovery process, you start to learn what your problems are specific to you and your environment and will naturally tailor the solutions to the way you want to work. That is not to say there isn't merit in checking out what tips and hacks other people use, its just a way to ensure that they work for you, and beneficial hacks should show in the metrics you develop for your system. Over the time I have built my system, I have learned a lot about how I work well and how I don't. I have seized countless waste reduction and automation opportunities. These things naturally reveal themselves when you capture the right data and put the appropriate amount of effort into learning. As a rule of thumb, I spend 10-15 minutes reviewing how I have worked for every hour worked. This sounds inefficient but since I have started I get much more out of each hour day by day. This more than accounts for those 10 minutes lost, and I have the data to prove it. So.... Don't bog yourself down trying to think of every aspect to improve nor begin with and searching the internet for every little trick. Setup a very simple feedback loop with simple but meaningful measurements. Start iterating rapidly and make sure you capture that learning. There is no need to wait or even plan, start now, this method will grow organically to cover more and more areas of your life. If you like this idea and want some more tangible information on good ways to implement this, let me know.

Stephen Pankhurst

When was the last time you wrote down everything you did in your day? Similar to keeping a food diary, it gives you acute awareness of how you’re feeling and what you’re working on at particular points throughout the day. Yes, include how you may be feeling as well. If you’re groggy when you first wake up in the morning but wide awake and ready to take on your to-do list after you eat lunch, then maybe that’s your sweet spot for productivity!The only way for you to figure out what’s best for you personally, is to be more self-aware. Once you find those key times of the day or even the best place for you to do them in your office at home, then you can implement any of the hacks or tricks for being more productive into your day-to-day habits.Ready to take that step? https://resources.contactually.com/h/i/210387273-contactually-productivity-hacks-ebook/232449

Kat Cavano

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