Week 45, 2020
Personal Productivity, vol 1: Getting Things Done, Pomodoro, and Atomic Habits
Each week I share three ideas for how to make work better. And this week, that means getting up close and personal with productivity.
Why am I writing about this? In a recent newsletter, James Clear (author of Atomic Habits, see w222020) wrote that “Results = (Hard Work * Time) ^ Strategy”. And it got me thinking: if results are a product of persistence in pursuit of a stated goal as Clear suggests, what does that actually look like on a day-to-day basis?
Let’s dig in.
1. Getting Things Done
Getting Things Done (GTD) is a framework for organizing tasks and projects. It was created by David Allen in the early 2000s and has since achieved cult status* in Silicon Valley and beyond. Its central tenet is this: the key to personal productivity is the ability to focus on one thing at a time. The human brain is a wonderful piece of equipment, but it’s not made for multitasking and it’s prone to distraction. Allen’s solution: a system of lists and heuristics with which to limit cognitive load and improve focus.
For more about GTD, see GTD in 15 minutes.
2. Pomodoro Technique
Pomodoro is a method for time management. It was created by Italian native Francesco Cirillo who, in the 1980s, began using his tomato-shaped kitchen timer to better manage his time. It’s central tenet: the key to personal productivity is our ability to afford uninterrupted time to focus. Cirillo’s solution: a pattern of 25-min blocks of time (immediately followed by a 5 min break) during which we turn off all distractions (e.g., phone silent, notifications off, headphones on) and focus on one thing and one thing only.
For more about the technique, visit Francesco’s website.
3. Atomic Habits
Atomic Habits provides a model for building good habits and breaking bad ones. It was created by James Clear, based on work by Charles Duhigg and Nil Eyal. Its central tenet is this: the key to productivity is to continuously score small wins over time, harnessing the Compound Effect. Clear’s solution: a model to help us design our environment in such a way that it makes good habits easy (i.e., to eat healthily, put a bowl of fruit on the kitchen table) and bad habits hard (i.e., to stop smoking, keep cigarettes in the car rather than in the house).
For more, check out this video 8-min introduction.
That’s what persistence-in-pursuit-of-a-stated-goal looks like on a day-to-day basis. It requires conscious effort; it requires that we continuously bag next-actions (a GTD term) that chip away at our long-term goals.
And what about those long-term goals? How might one go about exploring and defining what those goals should be? More on that next week, in part deux.
That’s all for this week.
Until next time: make it matter.
/Andreas
*I mean that in the nicest possible way. I was, and still am, a card-carrying member. I’ve read the books, attended the Master Class, and feverishly refined my system. But… I’ve since settled on something a bit more lightweight: Schedule it or it won’t get done.
