5 Mindsets For Killer Productivity

Love the process and rest will follow

I used to read a lot of productivity books, watch a lot of motivational videos and assume I am more productive than anyone else around me. And I still consume a lot of productivity materials from different sources, but there is a difference. I try to find out why something works and why something doesn’t. I do this by experimenting with this in my everyday life. Following are some of the mindsets I figured might help you to be more productive and happy.

Again, consider everything as an experiment. If it works, find out why it works. If it doesn’t, find out why. Here are the five mindsets I abide by always.

1) Mindset of less

Always keep in mind, you cannot do a hundred things at a time. Research shows you can keep only four items in your mind at a time. And retaining more than this in your mind will stop you from doing anything productive. In addition, the open loops running in your mind will further fog your brain. A practical thing to do is to do a brain dump.

A laundry list of all the thoughts and to-dos that occupies your mind transferred into a paper or a virtual medium. I prefer and recommend the physical medium like paper. When you dump your thoughts and open loops into a medium like paper, you will have enough attentional space to work on the most important things. Pick the most important task out of the list and work only on this.

Twist Buffett’s 5/25 method, consider the one item you picked as a “must-do” activity and consider all other items as “must-not-do”.

2) Mindset of no distractions

Now that you have removed all the present and persistent thoughts from your mind. The next step is to stop future distractions. Find out the possible distraction that can come up while you do your deep work. I bet the first one would be your phone. I recommend enabling DND or keeping the phone on silent or aeroplane mode. And if possible, keep your phone in a different room. Believe me, 90% of the calls and messages can wait at least an hour before you respond to them.

Another distraction might be your colleague or friend or someone who might come to you for a casual chat while you are doing your deep work. In these cases, it would be better to keep the expectations clear that you are working on something important. I have personally observed, if you work with your earphones on, chances are most of the people will not disturb you. You can try other methods like keeping a sign on your desk saying “In the zone, do not disturb” or something to that effect.

Another factor is the environment itself, if you are working in a cafe or a noisy environment, you might have to put on some noise cancellation earphones.

The gist of this is simple, control the environment you work in, anticipate distractions and avoid them.

3) Mindset of intentionality

Make sure every activity you perform is intentional. Make sure you know the “why” for a task you do. Next time when you pick up the phone, ask yourself, “Why did I pick up the phone and what information am I looking for?” More often than not, you will be picking the phone just to see whether there are any notifications. This has become absolutely involuntary nowadays. That is how our brain has been rewired in this era of technology. Companies spent millions of dollars to figure out the right way to attract your attention and that is the precise reason why you spend so much time on your devices.

We should be aware of this and do whatever we can to rewire this autopilot mode. And the best way to do this, is to ask yourself, “Is this something worth doing and is this helping me to achieve my goals?”. If the answer is no, you just let it go. Do this every hour and any time you switch tasks. Do this until it is engraved as a habit.

4) Mindset of mindfulness

Mindfulness and intentionality might sound the same but these are the two distinct parts to successfully do any task. Intentionality gives you the final goal or the “why” of any task. While mindfulness is observing yourself and checking whether you are moving in the right direction. Consider yourself as an external observer and when you see your mind wandering off, you nudge yourself back to the task at hand. One important aspect of mindfulness is that there is no judgement associated with nudging yourself. You are aware that you have wandered off and you are pushing yourself back into the game again.

Mindfulness might seem like a lot of work in the beginning but as you do this as much as possible, you tend to do this effortlessly. Research shows you can improve your mindfulness through activities like meditation. Do not let “meditation” tip you off. Choose a centre of attention like your breath. Spend five minutes entirely observing your breath and pushing your mind to the centre of attention is all you need to start with. You will see immense results.

5) Mindset of loving the process

The fundamental reason why we do not complete a lot of our work is that we keep the goal in mind and we continuously compare our present situation with the goal. This is not in harmony with the mindfulness concept we talked about. When we compare, we are inherently judging ourselves.

The right course of action during these instances is to be completely involved in the process and not the end goal.

For eg, your goal is to read a 500-page book. You look at the massive goal of 500 pages and procrastinate. Then you somehow muster the energy to start reading and in 20 mins you see yourself stuck on page 20. Then you compare yourself with the end goal, the 500-page mark. That is 25 times the kind of effort you will have to put. And eventually, you let it go.

Now let’s try changing the attitude a bit. Why are you reading? To be a voracious reader? To gather more knowledge on the subject? Any valid reason would suffice but your why should not be “to read 500 pages”. Always ensure the why is compelling enough. Else, do not even try the activity.

Once we know the “why”, believe that you will achieve the “why” and let it go until your next intentionality check. Now put all your attention on the process and nothing else. If you are reading, observe the sentence structure, the flow of ideas mentioned. Never worry about the goal when you work on the task.

If you are learning music, your goal might be to play the “xxx” in your brand new guitar. But when you practice, never keep this goal in mind. Your goal is to be part of the process, as involved as you can be. Love the process, receive non-judgemental feedbacks from yourself and keep doing the process. Then watch the magic unfold.

Final words

I hope I have given you enough to start your productivity experiment. Try this with something you want to achieve. Maybe you want to be a writer, build your processes and use this mindset to start. Maybe you want to finish that academic project, try to understand your “why” and you will start to love the process. You will see the project finishing on its own.

My recommendation is to experiment with one key project in your life and see whether it works for you.

Keep learning and keep adapting!