Exploiting Productivity Momentum

The third variation of productivity momentum that I like comes from the observation that projects that have already been built out are easier to work on than projects that haven’t.

Every piece of work has two phases. First there’s the uphill phase of figuring out what our approach is and what we’re going to do. Then, once we can see all the work involved, there’s the downhill phase of execution.

What I’m doing with this is to effectively trick my brain into thinking that I’ve already started. It’s weird but it works.

Productivity momentum is a simple, obvious idea: tasks become easier to do once you’ve started on them.

Leaving something unfinished works best when you’re executing downhill. The nuance, then, is to only use this trick when you’re sure of success.

There are three particular variations of productivity momentum that I like. The first is from my friend Wai Chuan, who told me a couple months ago that he lists down, before bed, three tasks that he intends to accomplish the next day.

The second variation is from — well, God knows where it’s from. (The last person to remind me of this idea is Tiger, who reached out for a chat after reading this blog, and I’m quite grateful to him for it). The technique I’m talking about here is the incredibly common trick of leaving something unfinished before you end your work for the day.

There’s a twist to this that I didn’t appreciate until recently. Productivity momentum only kicks in when you’re confident of success. Otherwise, the half-finished work just sits there and stares at you.

I think the most useful idea in this third variation is the notion of evaluating projects according to ‘activation energy’. The more built-out the project is, the more the activation energy cost has been paid, and the easier it is to work on. And so you can evaluate projects based on how far they’ve come from zero:

This is further anecdotal evidence in favour of the procrastination equation, because downhill work has a high expectancy for success.