(Re)Building a Productivity Stack, Part 1

What belongs in a productivity stack?

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As happens to many people on a journey to improve their personal productivity, I fell off the bandwagon — two years ago — and need to get back into good form again. I want to approach this new level of productivity in a more considered manner and so I will be documenting the process in a series of articles as I implement each component of my overall productivity “stack”. In this first article, I’ll be reflecting on what makes up a good productivity stack so that others can consider taking the first step in building their own stack, or can re-evaluate the stack that they already use.

The first thing that’s important to know about getting back into a more productive mode of being is that it doesn't really matter which methodology you choose to be at the core of your stack. The most important variable will be your ability to adhere to the methodology, and so pick one that you’re comfortable with.

For my purposes, I’ll be building my productivity stack around David Allen’s very excellent Getting Things Done methodology, often referred to as “GTD”. The generic workflow for GTD looks like this:

This workflow provides an excellent process to move from “stuff” to actions, but there is more to a good productivity stack than just dealing with the stuff you already have.

This is what the rest of this article will be about. I’ll be reflecting on the rest of the productivity stack, “stuff acquisition”, “ways and means”, and the components that belong in a full productivity toolkit.

For now I will be looking at each of these only as a broad category, but I will cover them in more depth as this process moves forward.

Beyond GTD: Habits and the Daily Routine

The biggest part of productivity that I think GTD doesn't address fully is the daily routine. GTD is great for those items that are related to projects, but not for addressing those critical recurring maintenance items that make up your daily routine. The average person is not going to put “brush teeth” down as an item in their GTD workflow, but it is still an important maintenance item that should be addressed daily (Note: I am not a dentist, nor do I play one on the internet).

Although I've given much thought to the subject of routines, I haven’t yet articulated any of it in writing or become familiar with the body of work already available. The one book I am aware of is one recommended by Tim Ferris (author of several best-selling books and a great personal development blog) called Daily Rituals: How Artists Work. I haven’t read this yet, but I’m sure I will have by the time I’m done this endeavour.

The Daily Routine is an important part of a comprehensive productivity stack, and so it is a process that needs to be managed, reviewed and modified at a regular interval. I will develop this further in a future article.

Control Your Inputs: Stuff Acquisition

The first item in the GTD workflow process is “Stuff”. Stuff goes in and action comes out. Some of this stuff will be good stuff, some of this stuff will be bad stuff. Where does this stuff come from? Well, that’s something to control as a part of your productivity stack.

If you exist in the real world, there is no way that you will control all of your inputs destined to become stuff. Some of it will foisted upon you by work projects, some of it will come from family obligations, and some of it will be a result of happenstance. However, there is a large percentage of your inputs that you can control, and that is the percentage which will be the focus of the method you employ as a part of a complete productivity stack — what you read, watch, do — who you associate with. Decisions made about these inputs will affect both the volume and quality of stuff that makes it’s way into your workflow and becomes reference material or units of work. This will be discussed in depth in a future article.

Ways and Means

It’s not enough to simply have a process on paper for personal productivity — things need to get done too. This is where ways and means come in. Building a productivity stack can cost money, but this can be avoided. Ultimately it depends on the solutions that you choose for your own productivity stack, where it goes beyond generic advice to a flow with your own stamp on it. How do you manage inputs? Apps on your phone, or email software? Paper? How much money do you spend to make it happen? How do you swap out and improve these methods over time? These are the ways and the means. I’ll attempt to write on these in more depth at a later time, but it is such a broad subject that I won’t be able to detail every possibility. For now it’s enough that you consider this as a part of your productivity stack.

The Productivity Toolkit

People usually reach for a toolkit for one of two reasons: They’re putting something together, or they’re fixing something that’s broken. The tools that will be in your productivity toolkit aren't a persistent part of your productivity stack, but tools that you will use to fix problems; to get yourself unstuck or to rapidly blast through action items. The point of actively recognizing them as a part of your toolkit is to be mindful of these tools at your disposal. It’s important to keep a list of what they are and how to use them together in a place that will be easy to reference whenever you are in need of a fix to your productivity problems.

The items in your toolkit will vary by your needs as an individual. You will not want to suffer from having only a hammer to get work done with and so you will add to your toolkit over time with a variety of tools, such as the Pomodoro Technique or others that protect you from procrastination or help to get you out of a jam.

Summary

Most of the articles I have read on productivity are about one-time tricks or tips that are only applicable in certain scenarios, but building a long-term productivity stack is a valuable exercise in developing sustained productivity for yourself. You can develop a higher level of productivity by considering how each layer of your productivity stack contributes to your overall effectiveness and make tweaks along the way. Over the next several articles on building a productivity stack, I will dive into each element of the stack in much more depth, as I build a new stack from scratch, and outline considerations that play a part in implementing that element into a comprehensive workflow for getting things done. I hope that you’ll follow along with me.