To Be More Productive, Follow the ‘Rule of Thirds’

You’ll often hear people say things like, “Develop this one productivity habit,” or, “Here are five ways to be more productive.”

As I’ve written about before, productivity doesn’t live in silos, which means one habit here or five ways there probably won’t make the kind of dent you desire. Rather, productivity (or lack thereof) is the sum of all your habits, tendencies, and decisions across the board. How you use technology for personal reasons, for instance, affects how you use it for professional ones.

Productivity also encompasses the internal and the external; the internal is your habits and skills, while the external is your environment and the variety of people in your life.

In other words, to be legitimately productive is to achieve the following trifecta:

Let’s take a closer look at each third:

1. Develop habits and skills.

The good news is, every habit and skill can be learned and honed through the combination of purposeful and deliberate practice, consistency, and discipline. The bad news is, habits and skills aren’t achieved overnight, in a few days, or even across a couple of weeks.

So long as you’re willing to embrace a marathon-like mindset, there are a few core habits and skills I recommend to become drastically more productive:

• Vertical Planning (habit)
• Daily Theming (habit)
• Deep Work (skill)
• Commitment devices (habit)
• The Eisenhower Matrix (habit)

Don’t fall for the all-or-nothing approach of trying to develop these habits and skills simultaneously. Instead, pick one and focus on becoming damn good at it, and then proceed with the next. I recommend you start with Vertical Planning.

2. Prime your environment.

An environment is the surroundings and conditions in which you operate. To operate productively, therefore, is to create an environment in which your most productive self thrives and endures.

Environments are like fashion: My style might not fit yours. For example, I’m perfectly productive working from home and listening to music, but you might not be. If you’re unsure which type of environment works best for you, process by elimination is always a good bet. Just don’t get bogged down by overthinking and inaction.

To get started with some highly effective environmental changes, download my Deep Work Checklist.

3. Inform relevant people.

You can have the world’s greatest habits and skills, and you can create an environment in which your most productive self thrives and endures, but if you don’t communicate your new M.O. to relevant people in your life, you run the risk of being grossly misunderstood, getting in trouble, pissing someone off, or the like.

For example, as part of Deep Work, your phone should be put away (e.g. in your bag), and your email should be closed (unless it’s absolutely necessary for the task at hand). This means you won’t be available to answer text messages and emails right away which, for many people in your life, might be contrary to the current expectation.

In this example, let your colleagues know that you’re making a calculated decision to check your phone and email less often, in order to be more productive and generate greater progress for the organization, project, client, et cetera. (“Less often” doesn’t necessarily mean once or twice a day, but probably less than your current frequency. Using the practice of Vertical Planning, I check my email five times per day, for example.)

For matters that are truly urgent — make sure everyone (including you) is on the same page about the difference between urgent and important — encourage your colleagues to approach you at your desk, or call you on the phone. Even though your phone is put away (e.g. in your bag), keep it on loud for phone calls only (not for text messages or any other notifications, which should either be muted or disabled).

If you’re still not convinced about putting your phone away, a 2017 study in The Journal of the Association of Consumer Research suggests smartphones — even if they’re powered off, and even if you’re actively and successfully ignoring it — “reduces available cognitive capacity,” which the study’s authors call “brain drain.”

As far as email is concerned, take it from New York University professor (and author of the social media addiction book Irresistible) Adam Alter, who told Business Insider:

“When you check your email, it takes about 25 minutes, on average, for you to get back into the zone of maximum productivity.”

As you make changes to your habits and environment, don’t limit your communications to people in your professional life, though. For example, if your partner/friends/kids are used to texting you about urgent issues, ask them to call you instead. But, for non-urgent issues, tell them to text you, and you’ll get back to them within a few hours, or however much time you schedule in between slots (Vertical Planning) to check your text messages, emails, et cetera.

Here are a few more examples of how I inform relevant people in my life about my productivity-driven lifestyle:

• I’ve asked my colleagues to text me if something is truly urgent and important, since I check my text messages more often than my emails.
• My girlfriend knows I probably won’t reply to her casual text messages right away, sometimes a few hours later, so she should call me if anything is truly urgent.
• I’ve told my clients to expect up to a 24-hour delay in response time during the workweek, and to call me if anything is terribly urgent and important.

In more than four years, I haven’t encountered any friction or pushback with these requests.

Side note: I also use the communication-friendly project and task management software Monday.com with my colleagues and clients, to minimize the amount of emails and text messages between us.

Article Recap

1. Develop productivity habits and skills, one at a time, only moving onto the next when you’ve solidified the previous one.
2. To operate productively, you must create an environment in which your most productive self thrives and endures. Start with my Deep Work Checklist.
3. Inform relevant people in your personal and professional life about the changes you’re making to be more productive, why you’re making them, the preferred ways to communicate with you moving forward, and expected response times.

There’s more where that came from at Hack My Time.