All the notes were taken directly from the source mentioned

– – –

Productivity is about how much you accomplish by managing time, attention and energy. From knowing to doing.

• Attention: What do you focus on? how well? how easily you get distracted?
• Energy: how much drive, motivation and overall energy you have throughout the day?

Connection between Values – Goals

How to deeply care about your goals, and articulate why you want to become more productive

Hierarchy of tasks: High impact vs low impact

• Planning your day-week
• Investing on learning
• Saying no to activities for the sake of busyness
• Automating tasks
• Checking email/messages repeatedly
• Website maintenance/Uploading blog posts/managing social media
• Disorganized internet consumption (articles/videos/podcasts)

Which areas do you want to become more productive (One thing at a time)

Make a list of everything (GTD) -> Prioritize with the Rule of 3

Rule of 3

The 3 most important “high impact to do’s”  based on time, attention and energy

Daily and weekly basis

Professional and Personal

Biological Prime Time

BPT: Period of highest energy

Work on your most important and meaningful tasks when you have the most energy – not when you have the most time.

Rescuetime.com Toggl.com

RescueTime tracks

your time for you automatically in the background, and Toggl lets you track your time

manually.

Procrastination

the more aversive (unattractive) a task or project is to you, the more likely you are to put it off. And there are six main task attributes that make procrastination more likely -> (Boring, frustrating, difficult, unstructured or ambiguous, lacking personal meaning, or intrinsic reward)

For example, if the trigger is:

• Boring: I go to my favorite café for an afternoon on Saturday to do my taxes

over a fancy drink while doing some people watching.

• Frustrating: I bring a book to the same café, and set a timer on my phone to

limit myself to working on my taxes for thirty minutes—and only work for

longer if I’m on a roll and feel like going on.

• Difficult: I research the tax process to see what steps I need to follow, and

what paperwork I need to gather. And I visit the café during my Biological

Prime Time, when I’ll naturally have more energy.

• Unstructured or Ambiguous: I make a detailed plan from my research that

has the very next steps I need to take to do them.

• Lacking in Personal Meaning: If I expect to get a refund, think about how

much money I will get back, and make a list of the meaningful things I’ll

spend that money on.

• Lacking in Intrinsic Rewards: For every fifteen minutes I spend on my

taxes, I set aside $2.50 to treat myself or reward myself in some meaningful

way for reaching milestones.

1. Create a procrastination list: When you make a list of meaningful and high-impact tasks to do the next time you procrastinate, you can remain productive while your prefrontal cortex warms up.
2. List the costs: Listing every single cost of putting something off is one of my favorite ways to get my prefrontal cortex fired up
3. Just get started

Meet Yourself from the Future

• Make a letter for your future self. Use FutureMe.org
• Try app Aging Booth

The more you see yourself like a stranger, the more likely you are to give your future self the same workload that you would give a stranger, and the more likely you are to put things off to tomorrow—for your future self to do.

Internet makes you waste time

Simply disconnect from it when working on a high-impact or ugly task, and to disconnect as much as possible throughout the day. After

Moore’s law, which says that the number of transistors on a chip

will double every two years

Working Smarter

Time, attention, and energy are inseparable. Managing your time becomes important only after you understand how much energy and focus you will have throughout the day and define what you want to accomplish.

Work Less

When you work consistently long hours, or spend too much time on tasks,

that’s usually not a sign that you have too much to do—it’s a sign that you’re not spending your energy and attention wisely.

• How much energy and focus did I have left?
• How easily was I distracted?
• Did I accomplish what I intended to?

By controlling how much time you spend on a task, you control how much energy and attention you spend on it. Force yourself to spend more energy over a shorter period of time to get things work more quickly:

• Set an artificial deadline to create more urgency around the task

Simplifying and creating more space around your high-return tasks gives you the wiggle room to react and then deal with whatever unexpected task comes along. More attentional space can bring better ideas

When you work consistently long hours, or spend too much time on tasks, that’s usually not a sign that you have too much to do—it’s a sign that you’re not spending your energy and attention wisely.

Structure down time and weekend

Maintenance Day: Do them with someone, Make a call, Podcast/Audio Book or do the tasks mindfully
Keep a limit of time!

• Grocery shopping

• Clean house and office

• Create a meal and workout plan

• Trim beard and shave

• Do laundry

• Prepare lunches in Tupperware containers for the week

• Water plants

• Read articles I’ve saved up throughout the week

• Review my projects, and define next steps

• Review my “Waiting For” list

• Define three outcomes for the week ahead

• Clear out all my inboxes

• Review my hot spots

• Review my Accomplishments List

Shrinking the unimportant

Shrink them low impact tasks, by setting a limit for how much time you spend on them, how frequently you focus on them, or both.

“Parkinson’s law” states that your work expands to fit the amount of time you have available for it

Low impact tasks

• Answering email

• Loading blog articles and newsletters

• Managing my calendar

• Researching and scheduling travel

• Doing website maintenance

• Managing my social media accounts

The following are a few examples of the limits I set:

• Scheduled just three thirty-minute chunks of time every day to deal with email

• Limited myself to checking social media five times a day

• Lumped similar tasks together so I could focus on them less frequently (e.g., by making all my phone calls at once)

• Only checked for new email when I had the time, focus, and energy to respond to everything that might have come in

• Limited myself to attending four hours of meetings a week—and pushed back on or canceled any meetings beyond that

• Took “vacations” away from support tasks (e.g., took a holiday from email for a day or two by setting up a temporary autoresponder so I could work on a project that was high impact)

You can also shrink the distractions of email by installing a send-it-later email plugin.

• Gmail: Boomerang (BoomerangGmail.com)
• Outlook: SendLater (SendLaterEmail.com)

Check my email three times every week.

Ex: every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoon at 3 p.m

Reward yourself as a new form of habit

Removing the unimportant

How much would I be willing to pay in order to buy back one hour of my life?

Depends on:

• How much money I earn

• How valuable my time is to me

• How valuable money is to me

• How overwhelmed I feel

VA

Eliminate my remaining low-return tasks by delegating them to someone

else, and free up valuable time and attention to spend on more important things.

Someone in a different time zone

• Fancy Hands (FancyHands.com) for hiring virtual assistants

• Zirtual (Zirtual.com) for hiring virtual assistants

• eaHelp (Eahelp.com) for hiring virtual assistants

• Freelancer (Freelancer.com) for per-task hiring

• Upwork (Upwork.com) for per-task hiring

• Job postings at local colleges and universities to hire an intern

• “Help wanted” posts on Craigslist and Twitter for assistants

“90 percent rule”

When you look at a new opportunity, rank it on a scale of 1-100 on how valuable or meaningful you think it is. If it isn’t a 90 or above, don’t do it.

Examining the commitments you take on and reflecting on their return will let

you simplify your work and life. These commitments include things like the following:

• Full- and part-time jobs

• Industry associations you’re a member of

• Owning and maintaining a home or a second home

• Educational commitments (e.g., attending university or college, or taking courses part-time)

• Relationships and friendships

• Clubs you’re involved with and Skills or hobbies you actively spend time on

Emptying your Brain

GTD method

“Any ‘would, could, should’ commitment held only in the psyche creates irrational and unresolvable pressure, 24-7.”

What Bluma Zeigarnik named the “Zeigarnik effect” in the late 1920s: incomplete or interrupted tasks weigh on our mind much more than completed tasks.

Notepad and pen

Worry List: If I caught myself worrying about something throughout the day, I reminded myself that I had scheduled time to worry later, and if I started worrying about a new thing during the day, I captured it on the list so I could worry about it later, as well.

Simpler Passwords using Password manager app

Rise Up

Doing a weekly review of your tasks and accomplishments not only gives you a better perspective on your wins and the areas you need to improve, it also gives you more control over your life. Adding in “hot spots” is a powerful addition to this technique that will keep you on the right path.

Hot spots

J.D Meier Areas

• Mind

• Body

• Emotions

• Career

• Finances

• Relationships

• Fun

Others:

• Learning (books, podcasts, audiobooks, youtube)

• Meditation/Mindfulness, Slowing down and working more deliberately

• Music

• Making more attentional space between work and life elements

The basic idea behind the technique is that once a week you review your list of hot spots, to think about how much time you spent in each one during the previous week, and to think about what to focus on and think about in the week ahead.

Every Maintenance Day, I look through the expanded areas of my life and ask myself a few questions— and some that I discovered during my year of productivity:

• What do I need to spend more time on next week?

• What did I spend too much time on last week?

• What do I need to schedule or do next week?

• What do I have to be mindful of next week?

• What are some unresolved issues I’m having in each area?

• What opportunities do I have in each of my hot spots next week?

• What obstacles will get in the way of my goals next week?

• Am I going in the right direction with all my commitments?

• Are there any commitments I need to add or remove? Expand or shrink?

• What did I knock out of the park last week?

To this day, this reflection helps me make course corrections and act more in accordance with my values and goals every week—without

Wander without distraction

30min per day for attentional space or productive mindfulness

Activities include

• Swimming or going for a nature walk

• Listening to music

• Investing in a creative hobby

• Praying

• Spending time with friends and family

• Going for a massage

Strengthen “Attention Muscle”

The less attention you devote to a task, the more time you have to spend to complete it

No multitasking

Make note of every distraction or interruption that pops up. Plan afterwards on how to avoid them

Shut alerts on your phone off

“20 Second Rule.” Positive psychologists (like bestselling author Shawn Achor) suggest that twenty seconds is enough temporal distance to keep distractions at bay and out of your way, and this rule can be used to your advantage.

Busyness is no different from laziness when it doesn’t lead you to accomplish anything

Habit

Cue, routine, and a reward.
“There’s the cue, which is the trigger for an automatic behavior to start, and then the routine, which is the behavior itself, and then finally a reward.” For example, when you wake up (cue), you might immediately pick up your smartphone to bounce between a bunch of different apps (routine), which lets you feel caught up and connected with the world (reward). Or when you’re trying to focus on an ugly task (cue), you might habitually open up your email (routine) to continue to feel productive even though you’re really procrastinating (reward). -> Charles Duhigg

• Work on Pomodoro time
• Deep listening in conversation or conference call
• Reading and eating

Meditation

Find somewhere quiet where you won’t be distracted

Sit upright, relax and stay alert

Set a timer

Focus on your breath, simply observe it

When your attention wanders to focus on something else, bring your attention back

Food

As you invest in your productivity, having a strong mental function becomes crucial—as does having a lot of energy.

Habits compound over time

Eat more unprocessed foods

Notice when you are full and stop eating

Reduce consumption of alcohol and sugary drinks

Drink caffeine strategically: Before a work session, a workout, while reflecting/journaling. Not in tasks involved in creativity. Green tea and matcha are better caffeine delivery systems.

Glycemic Index

Sleep

Create a nighttime ritual (both relaxing and meaningful to you), less Blue lights, stop driving caffeine 8-14 before you sleep, make your bed room a cave.

Take it easy: Thoughts on happiness

Take smart breaks, make the list of things you are grateful for, journal, break tasks down, Ask yourself for advice, reward yourself, fix your mindset (Carol Dweck), create an accomplishments list (success builds over success), look pictures of cute animals

Shad Helmstetter has found that 70% of our mind wondering is negative, counterproductive and works agains us.

Same results shown by Matt Killingsworth

People are why we do what we do, and why we push ourselves to accomplish more. Quality of your relationships determines the quality of your life.

List of Assessments

1. Values: Determine deep-rooted values -> determine goals
   Every day: Set Intention -> Action
   On your deathbed “Would I regret of doing more or less of this?
   At the end of the day, did I get done what I intended to?
2. Filter High Impact tasks
3. “Rule of 3” day & week, set reminders
   When, where, how and how much energy does each require
4. Prime time Challenge: For a week
   – Cut caffeine, alcohol and sugar and start measuring after 3-4 days
   – Small eat, frequent meals
   – Wake up and fall asleep naturally
   – Use the chart in productivityprojectbook.com
   – Activity, energy 1-10, time in procrastination
5. Flipping challenge: Make your high impact tasks MORE ATTRACTIVE and work on them on BPT
6. Time Travel Challenge: Connect your present self to your future self
7. Disconnect: Phone airplane mode, eliminate notifications
8. Shrink your work: Limit how much time you spend on your work
9. Capture Challenge + Next Step
10. Hot spot challenge
11. The Wandering Challenge
12. Single task Challenge
13. Water challenge
14. Heart rate challenge (15m)
15. Sleep challenge

Other thoughts

Meditation to slow down and work more deliberately

Sitting, walking, eating and every day house works

Creating mind maps for speaking engagements

Resources:

https://alifeofproductivity.com/the-productivity-project/resources/

Recommended Books:

• “Eat that frog” by Brian Tracy
• “Getting results the Agile Way” J.D Meier
• “Zen Habits” by Leo Babauta
• “Life Hacker” by Gina Trapani
• “Solving the Procrastination Puzzle” by Tim Pychyl
• “The procrastination equation” by Piers Steel
• “The happiness Hypothesis” by Jonathan Haidt
• “The procastination hand’s book” by Rita Emmett
• “The Willpower Instinct” by Kelly Mc Gonigal
• “Rapt” by Winifred Gallagher
• “The Organized Mind” by Daniel Levitin
• “Real happiness at work” Sharon Salzberg
• “The Shallows: What the internet is doing to our brains” by Nicholas Carr
• “Essentialism” by Greg McKeown
• “The Power of Habit” by Charles Duhigg
• “Getting Things Done” Dave Allen
• “The Organized Mind” Daniel Levitin
• “Spark” by John Ratey
• “The Happiness Advantage” – Shawn Achor

• “How we got to now” Documentary by Steven Johnson

Look for:

• Jane Goodall

***

Thanks for reading. Did you like the content you just read? You can help me spread these ideas by sharing this blog post through your social media channels or sending it as a direct message to your friends.