What productivity is (not) about, and how to get better at it

"Productivity" is a loaded term that can mean different things across domains, which include the country, organization, and individual level.

At the individual level, one of the most common misconceptions about productivity is that it's synonymous with getting more work done – or becoming more efficient.

However, that understanding is a relic from the industrial era. Back in the 19th and 20th centuries, most people did factory-type work. Their job was to turn resources into physical goods, so merely putting in the hours and getting more work done led to higher productivity. 

In today's knowledge economy, things are different.

Productivity is about accomplishing our goals – by getting the most of what matters out of our limited time, energy and attention. As a result, being productive requires us to be intentional about spending these three resources wisely.

Against this background, my favorite definition of individual productivity comes from author Chris Bailey: productivity means accomplishing what we intend to.

As he writes in "The Productivity Project", this includes both our professional and private lives: "If our plan today is to write three thousand words, rock a presentation with our leadership team, and catch up on our email, and we successfully accomplish all of those, we were perfectly productive. Likewise, if we intend to have a relaxing day and manage to do absolutely nothing, we're again perfectly productive".

The best way to measure productivity, he suggests, is to ask yourself a straightforward question at the end of every day: "Did I get done what I intended to?"

And to be more intentional about your days and weeks, he recommends setting three intentions to prioritize your most consequential tasks.

That "rule of 3" has two major advantages. The first is that it forces us to figure out what matters most. The second is that – since we can hold only three things in our mind at a time – it lets us maintain awareness, deliberateness and intentionality at work.

This prevents us from going through our days on autopilot mode, which is the opposite of being productive. Here’s how that looks like: We're reactive instead of proactive, continuously pursue multitasking (aka task switching), rarely take a break – and ultimately end up stressed out, overworked and unproductive.

If we merely plan each day as it arrives, we’ll seldomly manage to avoid autopilot mode. The first step towards accomplishing our goals at work, therefore, is getting a bird's eye view of the week ahead.

Planning your weeks

Having a weekly planning ritual will allow you to take a step back, figure out what you need to accomplish during that week, and plan your days accordingly. According to author Cal Newport, it has three specific advantages.

First, we get an overview of our essential (collaborative) tasks (notably meetings) and the time needed to prepare them. Second, it lets us set aside sufficient focused time for working on things that take longer than a day to accomplish. Third, if need be, it enables us to opt out of non-essential (collaborative) tasks (again, notably meetings) at the week's outset.

To create a weekly planning ritual, block ten minutes at the start of your week. I usually do so either on Sunday evening or first thing on Monday morning. During your planning ritual, go through the following three steps:

1. Mentally fast-forward to the end of your week, and come up with three things that you want to have accomplished by then. As our brains are wired to think in threes, you'll be able to keep that number in mind and effortlessly come back to these goals, even during busy weeks.

2. After writing down the three things you want to accomplish, estimate how much focused time you will need to get there. Then, based on that estimation, look at your calendar and develop a plan for including sufficient focused time during the upcoming days.

3. Consider canceling or rescheduling some of the non-essential collaborative tasks that week to make time for accomplishing your three goals. Also, schedule 10 minutes at the beginning of each morning for systematically reconciling focused and collaborative work in your daily planning. We'll next see how.

Scheduling your days

While a 10-minute weekly planning ritual provides you with a bird's eye view of the days ahead, taking some time each morning to schedule your day is vital to avoid spending it on autopilot.

As it turns out, managing our workday by merely using to-do lists is a terrible idea for pulling that off.

According to author Nir Eyal, managing our workday with to-do lists is like running our life on Windows 95, because to-do lists "allow us to get distracted by the easy or urgent tasks at the expense of the important work." In other words, to-do lists put us at high risk of getting into autopilot mode.

Yet, there is a better way. It's one of the most effective and well-researched approaches for accomplishing our goals, and it's used not only among leading productivity experts such as Bailey, Newport and Eyal, but also by many of the most successful (and busy) entrepreneurs of our time – including Bill Gates and Elon Musk.

That approach comes down to using implementation intentions at work. Put simply, this entails deciding in advance on 1) what you're going to do (e.g. focus deeply on a challenging task) and 2) when you're going to do it (e.g. from 8 to 9 am).

Instead of merely keeping ourselves busy, this allows us to align how we spend our time, energy and attention with what we want to accomplish during that day.

To do that, recall the three things you want to have accomplished by the end of the week. To schedule your day by setting implementation intentions, go through the following three steps.

1. Schedule your collaborative work. You're probably doing this already – whenever you put a meeting into your calendar. This, of course, is a great practice, because it kills several birds with one stone: you make sure not to forget the meeting, predetermine how long the meeting will last, and allow your co-workers to do the same. However, don't stop at meetings when putting collaborative work on your calendar. Add checking and answering email and group chat to your schedule at predetermined times of the day – for example at 10 am, 2 pm, 4 pm and 6 pm. By batching your collaborative work that way, you'll not only minimize multitasking, but also maximize the time of uninterrupted focus during the day.

2. Plan at least one 45-to-90-minute bout of deep focus. While the breakdown between your collaborative and focus work will vary according to your job and week, there is work best done in that mode every day for almost every knowledge worker. As it turns out, that even includes Elon Musk – who regularly blocks out long stretches of this day to spend a whopping 80% of his time on tasks that require deep focus, such as engineering and design. Lastly, schedule your focus work for times of the day when your mental energy is structurally highest – for 75% of us, that's in the (early) morning.

3. Don't forget to add sufficient time for taking breaks. As I've described in last week's post, humans are designed to pulse. Throughout the day, our mental energy and focus alternate between peaks and troughs, both along our ultradian (90-minute) and circadian (24-hour) rhythms. At the very least, put three "defocus" breaks on your calendar each morning. Take a longer lunch break with both autonomy and distance – by having it at times, places and with colleagues you like, get away from your desk, and try not to talk about work throughout lunch. And both in the morning and afternoon, add a shorter break that involves visual defocus and panoramic vision, ideally by taking a short walk around the office or block.

When schedule meets reality

"Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face", the infamous boxer Mike Tyson once said.

His statement accurately captures what most of us experience when our plan for the workday meets reality. When that happens, remaining deliberate about how we go about the rest of our day is vital.

Depending on the nature of the "punch", we can choose between one of three specific tactics for doing just that: Sticking to our plan, adapting our plan, and capturing things (to include in our plan).

These three tactics allow us to deliberately check in with – and possibly course-correct – our schedule as the day unfolds. So let's take a closer look at when and how to employ each of the three tactics.

1. If reasonably possible, stick to the implementation intentions you set in your plan. During your collaborative work sessions, only do the specific type of collaborative work (e.g. answering email) scheduled for that time. During your "deep focus" sessions, conversely, refrain from email and other collaborative work altogether.

2. Whenever it isn't possible to stick with the implementation intentions you put into your plan, adapt them. If, say, there's an urgent call that requires your attention, go do that call. After that, go through your daily planning ritual again and adapt your schedule for the rest of the day accordingly – while keeping your three goals for the week in your mind.

3. Have a systematic way of capturing thoughts and ideas to come back to later. As David Allen described in his productivity classic "Getting Things Done", your mind is for having ideas, not holding them. The less cluttered your mind, the more productive you get. That's why capturing thoughts and ideas at the moment is crucial for accomplishing what matters at work.

The tools of the trade

If you want to schedule and reschedule your day, there are several excellent digital and physical tools. Eyal's Timeboxing approach is the most popular digital one. It's about putting everything you do at work into your digital calendar.

Many people also use a physical calendar for setting implementation intentions. A very popular tool is Newport's Time-Block Planning approach. It essentially involves putting your schedule into a physical planner.

I employ a mix of digital and physical tools. I currently use Newport's physical Time-Block Planner to schedule and reschedule my day, because it comes with a much lower risk of getting carried away by digital distractions, especially in the early morning. Also, it adds some friction to adapting my plan – which motivates me to limit changes to instances when doing so is really necessary rather than merely convenient.

Conversely, to capture both ideas and to-do’s, I prefer the seamlessness of digital tools. For capturing to-do's across my smartphone and computer, I use Todoist – which is the best app for that purpose that I have come across so far. Also, I have a "Working memory" text file on my desktop. In that file, I capture more complex ideas and other longer information (e.g. meeting notes) throughout the day.

At the end of each day, I systematically review the ideas and to-do’s I have captured to include them in my weekly and daily planning. I usually do so in the evening – as part of a comprehensive "shutdown routine" to call it a day – which was also inspired by Newport. I'll provide a deep dive into why and how next week.

TL;DR

1) Productivity is about accomplishing our goals – and its opposite is going through our days being reactive instead of proactive, multitasking continuously, and rarely taking a break2) Having a weekly planning ritual will allow you to take a bird's eye view of the days ahead and come up with three things you want to accomplish by the week’s end.

3) Scheduling your day is vital to avoid spending it on autopilot, ideally by setting implementation intentions — by deciding in advance on 1) what you're going to do (e.g. focus deeply on a challenging task) and 2) when you're going to do it (e.g. from 8 to 9 am).

4) Stay deliberate when your schedule meets reality. Stick to your implementation intentions when possible, adapt them when not possible, and systematically capture ideas and to-do’s as you go.

5) Explore Nir Eyal's (digital) Timeboxing approach and Cal Newport's (physical) Time-Block Planning approach for pulling all of this off — and consider tools like Todoist to capture ideas and to-do’s seamlessly across the smartphone and computer.

And if you like what you read, please share it with others:

Until next week,
Christian