My Productivity Hacks

1. Digital minimalism

Perhaps my single biggest productivity tip is that I'm very intentional about what I do not do. Most significantly, (i) I do not watch any TV/Netflix. If I crave that sort of entertainment, I go to the actual movies to ensure my screen time is limited. (ii) I limit myself to one type of social media, LinkedIn, and do not access others like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, SnapChat, etc. Read Cal Newport's latest book - Digital Minimalism - for more on this sort of thing. This leaves me a lot more time for family, reading, hobbies, and deep work (also the name of another great Cal Newport book).

Moreover, I have turned off nearly all notifications. On my phone, the exceptions are direct text messages from people to my phone # (no group messages, etc.) and calendar notifications. On my laptop, my only exception is calendar notifications; I've disabled Slack, email, etc. notifications which I only respond to intentionally.

2. Time management (derived from David Allen's Getting Things Done which is great but dated)

a. DELETE - Does this need to be done? If no, delete. If yes, proceed.

b. DELEGATE - Am I uniquely qualified to do this or do I want/need to do this to build/hone a skill? If no, delegate. If yes, proceed.

c. DO IT NOW - Will this take more than 5 mins? If no, do it now. If yes, proceed.

d. SCHEDULE it now on your calendar

3. Calendar management/Time blocking

Per 2d, I'm very intentional about time blocking to complete/make progress on critical tasks. To ensure major projects get done on time, I work backward from the end-date so I block off enough distinct time blocks to complete.

Some use Pomodoro here to chunk things into 25-minute bursts but I don't find that necessary. 

With respect to my calendar, I also block lunch every day from 12p-1p and don't accept meetings (other than meeting people for lunch offsite) during those times; I'm very introverted but do eat lunch with others 3 or 4 times per week to establish/build relationships with people I care about personally and professionally.

4. Email management

I have two modes of looking at my email:

a. prioritization

b. action

During prioritization, I sort emails into three folders that "live" inside my inbox - 1_High, 2_Med, and 3_Low. Any email that will consume time to read or action goes into one of these three folders. Otherwise, if just a quick read or quick read & respond, then I just take care of it then and there. During action, I go last-in, first-out through the 1_High folder. Typically, I never make it to the 2_Med or 3_Low folders but I've learned to be fine with that.  

I once tried to set dedicated email prioritization and email action time blocks on my calendar. If you can pull that off, great; however, I found that I was not able to be that structured.

5. Task management

For my professional tasks, I use & love Trello (which is free). My board has the following tags:

a. To-Do

b. Blocked (= dependent on something out of my control)

c. Doing

d. Done

e. No thank you (= tasks I've decided aren't worth completing)

f. Parking lot (=ideas/tasks that have high impact, but low urgency)

As a final comment, I do not believe that online courses (or reading --- even this set of techniques) work by themselves. You need to pick one of the techniques above (or several, or all) and actually stick to them for ~30 days. At the very least, that means every morning you need to recommit to doing these things - perhaps by reading a list of what you committed to do.