How I Became Productive Again
As busy as I am, my biggest enemy has always been myself. I waste a lot of time. The internet and my cellphone can be endless rabbit holes of distraction and “productive procrastination.” Working in a co-working space only makes things worse, with constant noise and interruptions that easily ruin a good work flow.
In the past, I have frantically worked the whole day without getting any of my real goals done. I find myself, sometimes at 2am or 3am, looking back thinking, “where did the day go?”
A few months ago, I decided enough was enough. My startup was suffering. My relationships were suffering. I wasn’t sleeping enough, and I was constantly annoyed at myself.
These are the steps I took and the tools I use to get productive. In the last two months, while following these steps, I can proudly say my productivity has exploded.
How I think about Productivity
A lot of research shows that focus is like a muscle. You need to train it and work at it. While this is certainly true, for me, the single most important thing is to eliminate distractions so the “muscle” doesn’t have to work as hard.
Focus alone is not enough to be productive. I know plenty of people who are incredibly focused but they are not organized enough. They focus on the wrong tasks, or spend too much time on a given task.
Productivity is allocating your limited focus on the most important tasks.
TL;DR. Eliminate distractions to help you focus. Make sure you’re focusing on the right tasks.
Eliminating Distractions
Turn Off Desktop Notifications
Those little notifications that pop up in the top right of your computer (if you’re on a Mac) are killing your focus. They are shiny objects calling you to do other things than the task at hand. And our brains are programmed to get excited by them.
Email and Slack notifications are the two biggest culprits. I have fully turned off both. Otherwise, it’s impossible to focus (and I mean deep focus) on one task for more than 10 minutes without getting pulled into some other conversation.
Here’s how to turn off Gmail notifications, Slack notifications, Trello notifications, and Dropbox notifications.
Stop Picking Up Your Phone
Honestly, I feel like an idiot when I tell my friends how this actually works. Nevertheless, it actually works. Like pretty much everyone my age, I’m addicted to my cell phone (aka the distraction machine).
Whenever I would get stuck (when writing a blog post for example), I would pick up my phone to see what notifications I’d received. This was a productivity killer. It turned 5 second struggles into 5 minute rabbit holes, again and again and again.
With Forest, I chose how long I want to focus for, and it plants an imaginary tree for me. If I don’t leave the app for the period I want to focus, my tree lives. If I do leave the app, I “kill” my tree.
Now, when I hit a wall and pick up my phone, I see my tree and have to actively decide to give up and kill it. I have to actively decide to be unfocused and distracted. Sometimes I kill my tree, but usually I immediately put my phone down and get back to work.
I love Forest. I don’t care how stupid it sounds. It turns the somewhat daunting task of staying 100% focused for 45 minutes into small steps that are manageable for me. (p.s. if the forest team is reading this, can we chat sometime?).
Website Blockers
After notifications and my phone, the biggest distraction is the allure of the world wide web.
I could spend my life on reddit or KenKenPuzzle.com, so I block them completely from my computer. I could spend my life on facebook and espn or realclearpolitics, so I give myself 15 minutes a day total on those sites.
I use StayFocused and WasteNoTime to do this. I have them installed on every browser on my computer. Having both gives me some flexibility. I use WasteNoTime to completely block sites and StayFocused to give me 15 minutes a day on sites.
Honestly, I cannot imagine why everyone in the world doesn’t do this. We all know how distracting sites like facebook can be. Instead of having to tire my “focus muscle” by staying away from these sites, I can set up an environment that blocks them for me.
Spotify / Brain.fm and Noise Canceling Headphones
I work out of the Columbia Startup Lab, which is an awesome vibrant place to meet other entrepreneurs and share ideas. We are within a WeWork which is a bigger, even more vibrant community. That’s the good side.
The bad side is people are talking all around me. People are walking all around me. Phones are ringing all around me. It is a cesspool of distraction.
There is only so much to be done on this. Still, I try. For me, ambient noise that blocks out the actual distractions is key. I use the “Peaceful Piano” and the “Deep Focus” playlists on Spotify, and sometimes Brain.fm as well. Obviously, pure silence would be the best but that’s not an option for me.
Research has shown that music without the human voice is more conducive for work, and I couldn’t agree more.
Articles, Blogs and Productive Procrastination
Articles are great. But the easiest way to waste an hour is to read the latest and greatest blog posts by Brad Feld or Mark Suster or anyone else when you should be focused on the task at hand.
Enter Pocket. I get sent a lot of articles and stumble across a lot of articles in a given day. Rather than reading them in the moment, or leaving their tabs open (which just tempts me later on), I send them to Pocket. Pocket stores them offline and on my nightly commute I read them. (or for those of you that are even lazier, pocket can read them to you). Feel free to follow me on Pocket if you want some nightly reading as well.
Prioritizing My Work
As an entrepreneur, it can be a challenge to know what I should be working on. There are a million things I could do every day. How could I know if I’m using my time well? How could I make sure to accomplish the macro goals while still handling the daily madness?
Weekly Goals
My co-founder and I sit down once a week for a de-brief. We review what we did in the previous week, understand what worked and what didn’t (and what’s too soon to tell) and then assign priorities for the next week.
We give each other three main things to accomplish. It makes it very clear what we’re focused on and gives me a clear benchmark against which to prioritize. This helps make sure I’m accomplishing the big picture tasks.
Scheduling My Day (the night before)
I’m a huge believer in scheduling my day in as much detail as possible. No other change has had as profound an impact on me as this one. Every night, before leaving the office or before going to bed, I schedule my day in as much detail as possible. (Side bar: I do this the night before and not first thing in the morning because scheduling is actually a mentally taxing process. I want to get to the office in the morning and dive right into what I have to do).
Here are the three things scheduling my day helps me with:
First, it puts me under time pressure. There is nothing like the pressure of a deadline to get me to focus. With scheduling, I’ve created artificial deadlines throughout my day that help me focus. I know exactly how long I have to complete a task, and every minute I procrastinate or worked on something else I am cheating the task at hand.
Second, it puts an end time on the work. For example, I could spend days working on this blog post (probably some of you think I should!), but the truth is I don’t have that much time. I need to finish it and move on to other items. As Facebook says, “Done is better than perfect.” Taking a moment to think about how much time I should be spending on a certain task before starting it really helps me understand the work ahead.
Third, it has allowed me a guilt-free way to take breaks during the day, which also helps focus when I am working. Before this, I used to chastise myself or even feel guilty when I wasn’t working. But the break is key component to a productive day. I schedule breaks in (for example, meditation, lunch and the gym) and if I finish a task early I reward myself with a little break as well.
Increasing My Focus
Meditation
I try to meditate every day, for at least 10 minutes. I’m not great at it, and I’m not actually sure it helps me with my focus. There are loads of people who swear by it, so I’m going to keep trying it out.
I use a combination of Headspace and Meditation Studio. Both are apps with 5–20 minute sessions. I like to do it in the early afternoon, to break up my post-lunch lull. I’d love suggestions on when in the day it works for other people to meditate.
What about exercise?
I don’t actually have a strong opinion on this. It doesn’t affect me as much as I thought it would.
I find my peak performance is when I exercise regularly, but I don’t kill my body. A really intense workout (think Barry’s Bootcamp) drains me so much I really struggle to focus. Yoga or a run on the other hand wakes me up and helps me focus. I don’t know.
