Productivity

The anti-productivity productivity day is a concept that I created based on an article from Marc Andreessen. Marc advocates not sticking to a schedule for a whole year. Pick whatever you feel like working on when you wake up, and go work on it.

While that’s difficult to do for a whole year, it’s quite easy to do for one day. I like to schedule at... See more

Enter the 1–3–5 rule.

The 1–3–5 rule is a task management strategy that is all about prioritization and focus. It involves choosing one big, three medium, and five small tasks to try and knock out each day.

Let’s be clear, I believe in hard work. Nothing meaningful gets built without it.

But there’s a difference between hard work and working hard .

Hard work is about focus. About using your time with intent, cutting the noise, doing what actually moves the needle. It’s not about waking up early just to drown in Slack and back-to-backs until your brain... See more

List the activities and tasks that exercise your values, which I call “traction.” These are the activities that you will plot into your weekly timeboxed calendar.

Here's the key point : A flywheel helps build momentum that makes it easier to maintain the system.

In order for a flywheel to be effective, it must meet 3 criteria:

1. Activities must flow smoothly from one phase to the next


2. Each rotation is easier than the previous one


3. Each rotation produces more than the previous one.

When you wait, you lose momentum. And momentum is incredibly powerful because when you’re inspired, you act—and you do it with enthusiasm.

Most people’s mental models of energy are flawed: they think there’s a ‘tank’ of energy that gets depleted as you spend it. This may be roughly true for physical energy, but mental energy is different: spending mental energy on things that you consider productive or important gives you more mental energy for other things: a positive feedback loop.

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