The Productivity Project

perhaps the biggest lesson I learned from this experiment was just how important it is to deeply care about your productivity goals, about why you want to become more productive.

The most productive people work at a pace somewhere between the monk and the stock trader—fast enough to get everything done, and slowly enough so they can identify what’s important and then work deliberately and with intention.

but productivity has nothing to do with how much you do, and everything to do with how much you accomplish.

and having a deep, meaningful reason for becoming more productive will help you sustain your motivation in the long run.

Productivity is about how much you accomplish.

When you work like a monk, you work too slowly to accomplish much of anything, and when you work like a stock trader, you’re too hurried to step back from your work to identify what’s important so that you work smarter instead of just harder.

the best way to measure productivity is to ask yourself a very simple question at the end of every day: Did I get done what I intended to?

But in practice, becoming more productive is one of the toughest things you can undertake to do.