??The Productivity Pendulum

Hey friends,

My friend Tiago Forte (author of?Building a Second Brain) made a great point about productivity on my?Deep Dive podcast:

There’s a phase in your life when you have to be?productive, and a phase when you have to be?creative. I see it?as a pendulum:productivity, creativity, productivity, creativity.

Go too far to either end of the spectrum, and you start hitting diminishing returns.

This definitely rings true for me.

Get fixated on productivity to the exclusion of everything else, and your work starts to feel stale and formulaic.

That’s when you need to?get creative.

Do something new. Surprise yourself. Start working on that outrageous idea you had back in March 2022, but never acted on because you were ‘too busy’.

In 2020 for example, I could have continued ‘productively’ making YouTube videos as per usual. But?Angus?(one of my team) had the idea of creating a course teaching people to be YouTubers - the?Part-Time YouTube Academy.

We didn’t know if it would work, but two years later we’ve taught over 2,000 students, and the course has made north of $4 million.

But it’s also possible to swing?too?far towards creativity.?

That’s when you get too precious about your work, and everything has to be special and unique. When that happens, meaningful progress quickly grinds to a halt under the weight of expectation.

That’s your sign to?get productive?again. Identify what you do well. Then create a system that lets you do that thing consistently, efficiently, and to a good standard.

Some of my favourite techniques:

1. The Daily Highlight
2. Calendar Blocking
3. Aspirational Hourly Rate
4. Protected Time

But then of course, the pendulum swings back again. ??

Have a great week!

Ali xx