3 tips to hack productivity

With New York Times Reporter Charles Duhigg

In the months after Charles Duhigg published his first book, he felt himself teetering on the edge of burnout. After years of work, The power of habit had hit the shelves of bookstores and skyrocketed up the New York Times bestseller list. He was also working on a series for the Times called “The iEconomy,” which would go on to win the Pulitzer Prize.

The only problem? He found himself trapped in a hamster-wheel-like churn of emails, half-written memos and other work he could never quite get done. He would get home at the end of the day and just want to spend time with his wife and his two young children. But instead, he had to hunch over his laptop to read and respond to hundreds of emails.

There has to be a better way to work, Duhigg thought. How could he feel so stressed and inundated by a long list of work tasks, even when he was this successful? Like any good reporter, Duhigg’s natural inclination was to investigate. So he started calling researchers on productivity and asking them how — and why — some people are so much more productive than others.

“People get more done because they teach themselves to think differently.”
— Charles Duhigg

Duhigg was sure that people who were more productive had some magic secret that helped them work differently. Maybe they never left their desks, or they were better at ignoring certain requests. But over time, he discovered that productivity was rooted more deeply in habits of thought than it was in habits of work. “What all the research tells us that that people get more done because they teach themselves to think differently,” he says.

Here are three secrets Duhigg uncovered about why some people and companies are so much more productive than others:

1. Write a script for your day

One way to set yourself up to be productive is to build a mental model of what you expect to see. This helps you choose “much more quickly what to focus on and what to ignore,” Duhigg says.

In a study of Fortune 500 companies, he says, researchers found that the most successful executives performed well in part because they envisioned their day with just a few degrees more specificity than their peers. An average executive would say to herself, “Today I have a meeting at 10 o’clock and I need to leave at 10:30.” But the most successful executives, Duhigg explains, would think, “I have a meeting at 10 o’clock and I need to leave at 10:30. This meeting is probably going to start with Jim bringing up that dumb idea that he always brings up, and then Suzy is going to disagree with him because Suzy and Jim just hate each other. Then at that moment, that’s when I’m going to come in with my idea. And because I come in at the right time, my idea’s going to just win the meeting.”

By telling yourself detailed stories like this, you equip your brain to make decisions more quickly and to avoid distraction.

2. The right way to do to-do lists

Another key to business success is pairing SMART goals with stretch goals. Started by General Electric (GE) in the 1940s, the concept of SMART goals required that goals be:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Realistic
• Timebound

By the early 1980s, Duhigg explains in Smarter Faster Better, GE was the second-most valuable company in the United States, and its executives attributed its success in part to its culture of clear goal-setting. But by the late 1980s, leaders at GE noticed a troubling trend at two of its divisions that had once been top performers. When a team of consultants went to the two divisions, they discovered that profits were falling because employees were setting SMART goals that were not ambitious enough. Yes, they were meeting their goals, but those goals weren’t big enough to move the company forward. This is where stretch goals come in — goals that seem impossible at first, until you break them down into smaller, more achievable SMART goals. By pairing SMART and stretch goals, individuals and businesses can strike that perfect balance between ambition and achievability.

“There’s a difference between being busy and being productive”
— Charles Duhigg

Apart from balancing them with long-term goal-setting, it’s also important to use daily to-do lists to gain focus rather than just use as a brain dump for all the many tasks you need to do. “Studies indicate that about 15% of people writing to-do lists will write down things they have already completed because it just feels so good to check them off and feel like you’re being productive,” Duhigg says. “The problem is that’s using a to-do list for what’s known as mood repair, not for productivity.” Many people also write lists with 20–30 tasks of varying difficulty that they need to accomplish. But research shows that when presented with such a huge list, there’s a part of your brain that will seek out the easiest thing to do and do that first, rather than work on that important project you’ve been putting off for two weeks.

So, each morning, Duhigg writes out a to-do list with just three items on it. While the list may seem small, it helps him identify the most important things he needs to accomplish, rather than getting lost in the weeds of the small things it would just feel good to accomplish. “Tell yourself a story in the morning and write a to-do list that just has three things on it,” he says. “Both of those are habits that urge us to think more deeply about the choices we’re making. And it’s that thinking about choices and taking control of how we spend our time that makes people productive instead of busy.”

3. Use technology. But don’t let technology use you.

In the early 20th Century, with the advent of automobiles, a number of cities throughout the United States passed laws saying you couldn’t talk and cross the street at the same time. The concern was that if people were talking, they would be too distracted by the conversation and could get hit by a car. While it may seem ridiculous now, at the time this concern was exactly right.

“Our ability to use technology changes in almost subconscious ways with time and practice,” Duhigg says. “Today, everyone knows how to look for a car and have a conversation at the same time. But we don’t know, for instance, how to reply to emails and have a conversation at the same time.”

Just as our forebears had to establish new habits as technology evolved, so do we. If we pick up our smartphone and fire off an email every time it buzzes in our pocket, we’re putting ourselves at a disadvantage by letting technology be a stronger distraction than it is a productivity aid.

The way around this danger is to build specific habits about how to use technology. Maybe you don’t check email on the weekends, or you only check it at two specific times in your workday. Maybe you turn off the buzzing notifications on your phone when you’re at work so you can concentrate better. There’s no one right way to use email, Slack or other collaboration tools, but forming habits so that you use technology in the way that helps you get the most work accomplished — rather than just feel busy without getting much done — is critical.

It’s all about forming the right habits

Throughout all his research, Charles Duhigg found one key thread: productivity boils down to habits. There’s no magic secret to turn you into superman or superwoman at work. Rather, it’s about setting the right goals and forming habits to work smarter, faster and better. “People who are the most productive,” he says, “Teach themselves mental habits that encourage them to think more deeply particularly when thinking is hard.”

The blueprint for productivity

1. Before you start your day, take 5 minutes to envision in detail what it will look like.
2. Write a to-do list each morning with just three important things you want to accomplish.
3. Think through and create rules for email, chat apps and other forms of communication so they become tools instead of distractions.

About Charles Duhigg

Charles Duhigg has been a reporter for the New York Times since 2006. He is a Pulitzer Prize winner and author of two best-selling books: The power of habit: Why we do what we do in life and business and Smarter faster better: The transformative power of real productivity.