Increase Your Productivity Exponentially With These 3 Tips!
Take control of your time, attention, and energy.
If you ever need help finding time to do what you would like, if you seem to procrastinate or are too tired to do productive work, I have these three tips that will increase your productive output, free up your time to do the things you love and free up your brain from distracting clutter.
These tips came mainly from the book "The Productivity Project" by Chris Bailey, which I have expanded from other readings and personal experiences. I highly recommend this book if productivity is an interesting topic for you.
In his book, Bailey claims that productivity requires managing three resources: time, attention, and energy. If any of these resources are lacking, you will hinder your productivity. He also provides a list of actions to manage these resources effectively. Here are three of my most significant learnings from this book.
Use the rule of 3.
Build Rome in a day.
Perform a brain dump.
The rule of 3
What is it?
The rule of 3 refers to prioritizing three tasks to be completed by the end of the day and three goals to be completed by the end of the week. The number three is great for this because three is not a large enough number cause procrastination, and it is not so small that it causes insignificant results in your productivity.
Why should you care?
The superpower of prioritizing the three will give you a bird's eye view of your productivity, the focus required to complete these tasks, and the satisfaction of achieving them.
How to use it:
Write down three goals you must accomplish at the beginning of each week. At the beginning of each day, write down three tasks you must complete by the end of the day. These goals should be doable in this period and not too easy. This task may require a bit of practice, but you will eventually find the desired sweet spot of difficulty and time.
I like to have a separate list for my work and personal life. However, you don't have to do this. Another alternative is to mix and match 2 goals for a career and one personal goal or any other mix. Stay within the number three, at least in the first month of your experiment.
How can you take action?
Write down three goals you wish to accomplish tomorrow and three goals you want to achieve this week or next, depending on when you read this.
Build Rome in a day.
What am I referring to building Rome in a day?
The old saying goes, "Rome wasn't built in a day." But let's forget that momentarily and try to build Rome in a day. What are the most critical tasks you would need to complete? What constitutes the minimum viable product? How would this be organized?... Now, instead of building Rome in a day, think about how you would create that project you are working on (or you haven't started) in a day. Schedule less time for important tasks!
If you are in college or have worked on specific tasks that have long periods before a deadline, you may have noticed how 80-90% of your work was completed during the last week (or maybe even during the last day) before the deadline. This procrastination happens because there is a natural tendency to spread out the work for the total time that somebody allocated. So, if you assign three months to write an essay, it will take you three months; if you assign one day, it will take you one day.
Why should you care?
The superpowers of deep work and time allocation will exponentially increase your efficiency in anything you would like to accomplish.
How to use it:
I think about this in two ways. First, you need to establish what you will be doing in a relatively short amount of time. This exercise is also called a sprint. Secondly, you need to allocate less time to the tasks that you are already doing and set specific and ambitious deadlines.
In their book "Sprint," Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky, and Braden Kowitz explain the concept of a sprint. A sprint is a term used and coined by the authors to describe a week of focused work to develop a solution, design it, and test it with real customers. (I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in product development.)
However, only some tasks require a week of focused work. I think this practice can be used on a smaller scale.
For small tasks, take two hours, quiet anything else going on in your life, and work on how to accomplish your project or task. In most cases, you won't be able to complete this task. Still, this exercise aims to understand the most critical tasks you must accomplish to achieve the minimum viable solution.
After this exercise, work on an ambitious timeline to complete the project and keep yourself accountable.
Example:
If you were to write an essay in 10 minutes, you would give an introduction in a sentence. Then outline the essential points. Finally, conclude in a sentence. You could also ask chat GPT to write ten essays in that period (lol).
How you can take action:
Set tight deadlines that almost seem impossible.
Time yourself. One tool I started implementing and enjoy is the Time Timer, a watch I use to time my focused sessions with a visual representation of how time passes.
Perform a brain dump
What is it?
A brain dump is to take everything that is in your head, that is nagging lightly, and dump it on a sheet of paper every goal, every idea, and every task. Baily reiterates that there is a great relief once you do this, and I can confirm that you will feel like a weight has been lifted from your shoulders.
Why should you care?
Your brain is extremely good at many things. However, holding information and keeping it organized, visible, and accessible is not one of these things.
The superpower of a clean brain will give you a bird's eye view of everything you need and want to accomplish in the near and long term. If you do not organize your thoughts, you are positioning yourself in a dire situation because there is no clear path forward to any of your ambitions.
You will feel great relief and relaxation once you brain dump.
How to use it:
Grab a timer, one or more blank pieces of paper and a pencil.
Set the timer for an hour.
Write everything that is in your brain.
Here is the structure that I used the first time I did this:
What are the things that I actually need?
- Health
Physical
Good Sleep
Healthy Food
…
Mental
Good Relationships
Spend quality time with …
Call regularly …
…
Spiritual
Gratefulness
Kindness
…
What are the things I want?
- Financial Freedom.
- Create new Memories.
- …
What are my interests?
- Blogging
- Music
- Engineering
- …
After reading this book and others, it is clear that this is not a unique idea. One of the most fascinating expansions of this idea is the concept of the second brain. This concept is essentially the use of technology to organize your thoughts, ideas, and goals because, as opposed to our brains, computers are well equipped to store and manage data for the long term while keeping it visible and accessible.
Once I performed the brain dump on paper, I made a second brain in an app called Notion.
Here is the video that explains how to do it:
This has become handy for keeping my mind organized, especially if it is compatible with any device.
How can you take action:
Schedule a time this week to complete your brain dump. You will feel like a new person afterward.
Conclusion
If you have tried to make to-do lists in the past, you probably overshot your output by a dozen tasks. Don't try to do everything; try to do three things. This is the rule of 3.
If you have been saying that you will build a business, create a project, or start a YouTube channel for years and have yet to start, then you should build Rome in a day.
If you have dozens, hundreds, or thousands of things in your head but can't seem to get anything done with these thoughts, perform a brain dump.
Administering your time, attention, and energy to do what you want is one of the greatest freedoms you can achieve. Stop being forced to do whatever social media, email, and mindless entertainment want you to do. Take control of your life by giving everything purpose. Remember, being busy is not the same as being productive. You could be busy all day and accomplish nothing, and continuing to be busy rather than productive will not provide the fruits you would like to harvest in the future.
