A healthy solution for personal productivity problem. The story of Y-Productive.

Have you ever felt that you desperately wanted to improve a work day? But what are you ready to do to improve it? How do you know that something is a right point to apply your efforts? Keep this thought while I am introducing myself :)

My name is Alex. I am CEO and co-founder of Y-Productive. We make software for productivity improvement which uses proven neuroscience practices.

I’ve been thinking about improving my workday hundreds of times in the past. I had practiced different blends of productivity techniques, but I didn’t find software for digital workers which leveraged all these techniques and kept me going enough time to see the results. That’s how I’ve decided to start own software company. Yeah, the story of Y-Productive is the story of solving personal productivity problem.

Now, as this crazy digital world is spinning, I feel the need to help people who seek workday improvement as I do. My personal motto is “There’s no time like the present”. I want to be proud of each day so I want to put my efforts in the right direction and not waste it for nothing. Do you feel the same? Follow me along to find out how I tackle it now and what our plans for the future.

Personal Problem

The story began when I became entrepreneur 2 years ago. I had several good corporate jobs before, but then it was so exciting to become my own boss. The top expectation was to get more freedom in what I did. And I got that freedom and was able to work from any part of the world.

Travelworking in Iceland

But becoming CEO of yourself brought problems with work-life balance as work started insanely consuming my time. A lot of tasks seemed critical to tackle — that’s how I went into a spiral of working more and more but accomplishing less and less. I had burnouts many times before, but the latest burn out was the most crushing one. Apathy, fever, no motivation to get out of the bed… it was around 1 year ago. I felt like a retired athlete who had no will to apply his abilities anymore.

First signs of recovery started appearing only 2 weeks after. I was tired of laying on a sofa watching dumb TV series and thought about reading something valuable. And, fortunately, I found “Your Brain at Work” book on my shelf written by Dr. David Rock. It was some old gift, but for some reason, it was not in priority reading list. Bad for me. I had started reading the book — it was a gold mine of anti-burnout advice. The book explains everything about productivity and work performance from the neuroscience perspective. The style is very engaging, no scientific boring language at all (seems I know why I was afraid to read it before).

When I finished the book, I was willing to act on a result again. I knew the next burnout is unavoidable at some point in the future, but I wanted to make it smoother. So, I decided to conduct retrospective based on new knowledge. I tried to break down all the reasons of burnout into atoms so that I can recover my productivity little by little. That’s what ideal productivity application must do for you. As a result, I learned the weak spots I need to challenge:

• Context switching. I worked on something, then I had a meeting — context switched. Not so bad if meetings were under control. Much worse if I worked on something, then I was distracted by colleague’s request to help him or received a phone call, or … Arrrr.
• External distractions. Any distraction (even small) impacts productivity much worse than people think. External distractions became such big part of our lives that we often don’t even notice them. This bitter truth astonished me when I started putting a tick in my notepad every time I was distracted.
• Planning tasks, but not completing them. That was daunting because of lack of progress. There were many reasons for it, from helping others to planning too much for a day. Excuses, excuses, excuses…
• Lack of planning. No planning was my natural answer to planning tasks, but not completing them. As a result, I did a lot of work but didn’t achieve any goal.
• Procrastination. I did nothing because of wrong day planning. I didn’t account for different levels of energy throughout a day. Meetings and small tasks in the morning ate my most productive period of time. Around 2 PM I was able to work on my tasks, but I procrastinated instead. I just didn’t have enough energy for the work I planned.
• Wrong priorities. What you don’t do is much more important than what you do. For days I worked on tasks which appeared to be unimportant. I procrastinated on these tasks because subconsciously I understood they were unimportant.
• Work when tired. I worked Monday to Friday, yet I was able to work or rest on any day. But I didn’t. At some days I made myself to work, however, I should have better to rest that day.
• Wrong strategic decisions. I was busy and didn’t have time to think for a while, make a holistic assessment of a situation, and make a creative decision.

Current Solution For a Challenge

That’s how the idea for Y-Productive sparked. Fast forward 7 months, and now we are doing our first step toward the ultimate goal of workday improvement — we have launched our productivity application. If you feel related to the same issues I had, try out our software and see if it works for you as well. Here are a few basic steps to start:

1. Create a list of your tasks for today.
2. Track your working progress on appropriate tasks.
3. From time to time categorize new websites and applications as productive or unproductive.

I know, it’s an effort by all means, but it turned out to be a solution for my productivity problem. While automated productivity trackers propose you to figurally lay on a sofa and forget about acting on a problem, like I was a year before, Y-Productive is different. Being a blend of productivity tracker, time tracker, and to-do list software, it concentrates on what’s really important for your productivity: actions invested to achieve a goal. It is like a fitness coach, who helps you to obtain a healthy productivity lifestyle and tells you the blunt truth which no other app will provide. In result, we get the only productivity tracker that will not pity you on your way to improvements.

I get a lot out of Y-Productive application myself:

• The structure of my work day. I know when I’ve worked, how many times I approached some task until its completion, or when I was away from a computer, etc.
• Productivity in the context. Knowing a context is the key to productivity improvement. A task is the missing piece of the context. Looking at the chart, I can spot productivity patterns, check how many times I’ve been distracted, or even deep dive to 5 minutes to find out what exactly happened.
• Review my day. You can’t improve if you don’t act on your goal. At the start of each week, I do my personal review and plan session. By doing a review, I make better conclusions about my productive and unproductive behaviors. I see real progress that I’ve done and know what I should do to improve my results. It motivates me better than anything else.

We Are Just Starting

The goal of the current phase #1 is straightforward productivity tracking software enriched with the context — your tasks for a day.

Straightforward productivity tracking (when you map websites/applications as productive/unproductive) is the solution which helps to put your efforts into the right direction, so you invest your actions and energy into a result. Our next goal is to be able to identify behavior patterns, both productive and unproductive, and pro-actively help our customers to improve their behavior throughout work day. A smart coach in our productivity gym, if you will. That’s the next phase #2 which would require all our experience and your support to solve such a complex challenge.

We are all ears and eagerly waiting for feedback from our customers. If you want to power up your productivity and don’t want to give up on it by day 5 of your trial (like it happened to me with the most of similar apps), download Y-Productive desktop application. We have a lot of stuff to help you on your way.

Share your experience on how it works for you and you’ll help us in return. Let’s make something that really changes people’s life. Thanks a lot!