Everything you’ll ever need to know about productivity

You need to know something about me: I don’t have a lot of knowledge about a lot of things. But I am very intelligent. That means I’m able to acquire and apply knowledge very quickly. I’m also very curious. One of the things I have a lot of knowledge about is productivity techniques, methods, hacks, tricks, whatever you want to call them. I’ve been interested in increasing my productivity for a long time. In this post, you’ll learn everything you’ll ever need to be more productive.

This stuff is way simpler than they want you to believe

When I say “they”, I mean productivity gurus who write on their productivity sites all day long. There was a time when you only wrote on the Internet whenever you had some insightful knowledge to share with the world. Nowadays, writing for the Internet is a full time job. Websites are companies. Writers are employees. Advertising pays the bills. That means you need to write what brings clicks. Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a science; so is web marketing. That means you have to make people believe they’re not productive enough and they need your tricks, techniques and apps. That’s not true. Period. Being productive is simple. Stop reading posts about being productive and start being productive.

The 80/20 principle

The 80/20 principle (aka, pareto principle) states that 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts. This means that, if you do 5 things today, 1 of them is going to bring you 80% of the results. Do that one first. The other 4 combined will only account for 20% (roughly). Being productive is not being efficient, it’s being effective. Figure out what task will bring you the most significant results and do it before the others. If you have a report to deliver, it’s probably best to start writing the report instead of working on the cover. Or answering emails that you can answer at the end of the day. If you have to study, it’s probably better to start summarising the book or solving some exercises or reading your notes. Rewriting all your class notes to make them look pretty won’t bring you the major part of the results. If you have a meeting to prepare, the task that will bring you the most results is probably writing a bullet list of everything you have to talk about in that meeting. Organising the chairs is not important (although necessary). Applying this principle to your everyday life will make you far more productive than reading a book on productivity.

Beating procrastination

We all lie to ourselves when we say that “we’ll do it later.” Truth is if we’re not in the mood to do it now, we won’t be in the mood to do it later. So, smart people don’t try to beat procrastination, they just annihilate any possibility of not doing what they’re supposed to do. I never try to beat my desire to check Facebook and reddit when I’m studying. I simply block Internet access for the time I want to be studying because if I want to check Facebook now, I’ll want to check it even more, later. Because I know this, I simply solve in a very effective way. Beating procrastination is a simple step: admit that you’re lying to yourself when you say will just browse Facebook for 10 more minutes. If you don’t want to work now, your willpower will be even more reduced 10 minutes from now. So do it now.

Stop wasting time with apps and productivity methods

If you need a book to learn about a productivity method (GTD, Agile results, etc…), how complicated is this method?! And if it is complicated, how easy is it to implement in your life?! Probably not very easy. So, why waste time learning about all these productivity methods when you should be doing stuff that really matters? (Read above, the pareto principle).

Same thing happens with apps. Every day there is a new app that promises to organize your workload much better, take your mind off of things, simplify your life and make you more productive all around. And because they’re selling exactly what you want, you install that new app. And three days later you install another. And then another… Do you know what is way more effective than writing down what you have to do? Actually doing those things. Categories, projects, tags, locations, tasks, subtasks, contexts, etc… Oh my god. How has your brain not exploded already? Just do it, already. Seriously.

The stuff that really makes a difference

If you figure out what is the most important task of your day (80/20 principle) and stop lying to yourself when you say you’ll work later, you’re already ahead of every productivity junkie out there who is still obsessed with learning the ‘secret’ of productive people. But if you want to take things a step further, there are some things that you can actually improve that will make you more productive.

1. Learn touch typing

If writing on a computer is part of your work (and I’m guessing it probably is), learning touch typing and bringing your writing speed up to 90 or even 100 words per minute will make you write more in less time. This is a significant result.

2. Master the fundamentals

There is a Pepsi ad called ‘uncle Drew’ where Kyrie Irving (professional NBA player) says something important: “you need to master the fundamentals so you can forget about them”. This means if you want to do your job better, you need to master the fundamentals of it so they become second nature and you don’t have to think about them. For example, if you want to be a better student, you need to learn how to learn. If your job is to write, you need to practise writing efficient sentences. Using punctuation should be second nature. Using strong verbs instead of adverbs should be part of your system. If you are an engineer, physics should be the air you breathe. Only by mastering the fundamentals can you forget about them and take the next step. Every area has its own fundamentals. Figure out what they are and practise them enough to make them your second nature.

3. Eat well and sleep enough

Should be a no-brainer but the nutrients you give to your body dictate a lot about how you feel. Pretty self explanatory. Same thing happens when you sleep enough. It’s scientifically proven that our brains don’t work as well when we don’t sleep.

Final thoughts

If you google “productivity”, you’ll face a bazillion blog posts on that subject. Clearly, it’s something that people are interested in. Every day there is a new technique that will make you 15% more efficient, or a trick that will save you ten hours every week. This is nothing but a hoax. Time can not be saved, only spent. If you want to be truly productive, don’t think about saving time. Instead, decide what are the things you should spend your time on.

To put all this into perspective, I’ll tell you about a classmate of mine that was a much better student than me. We used to sit down to study in college and I would have a list of things I had to do on my phone, and sometimes I would read a post or two about productivity, just to feel motivated. I had all the proper apps in my Macbook and in my smartphone — mental maps, to-do lists, outliners, etc… I knew all the productivity techniques to organize my tasks. But hours would go by and I hadn’t studied a minute. On the other hand, this classmate of mine would just sit down, take out his laptop, his notebook, his pen and pencil and just start summarizing or solving exercises. He knew zero productivity methods, he didn’t even have a smartphone, he didn’t know about post-its, or task lists. But he studied way more than me and he finished college several years before me. He’s an engineer now and he still has no idea about what productivity techniques are out there. This means one thing only: productivity techniques are a waste of time.

I hope this is the last post you read on the subject.