Rules for Personal Efficiency

Early in the year, I woke up every morning having a fixed set of goals concerning the work I do, but 4 months into the year my itinerary took a great shift.

My work habits changed tremendously, I had to review my personal goals and redefine what was worth the moment going forward.

These are the few things that I’ve discovered and you may find them helpful too.

Visions are different from Goals.

Your vision is your overall projection for the outcome of your life, while your goals are milestones that cumulatively get you there. Your goals should be flexible, considering the many unknowns - always be ready to iterate and tweak your goals in a way that it still forges a new path to your overall vision.

Take notes and document your plans.

Notes are very important. You know sometimes we feel confused and caught up in a flurry of activities that leave us unsure of where we are in the scheme of things. Taking notes helps you empty the inner noise and stay clear, focused, and unscathed. For note-taking and documentation Evernote, Obsidian, and Notion are very awesome tools.

Build specific knowledge.

The world rewards who you are (which it interprets as what you are capable of) and considering the billions of people out there your goal is to stand out from the crowd. Specific knowledge should be something that other people will need time to gain and something whose output can be measured(unlike say Entrepreneurship - you can’t set KPIs for entrepreneurship as a skill). It shouldn’t be something anybody can outrightly pick. An example of this would be tech skills, finance, or something that needs a great deal of effort to become proficient at.

The goal is to become not to do.

Remember that we are called human beings, not human doing. A robot would never be human even if it used AI to mimic intelligence. Being human is not an action, it’s essentially something that we are - a “being”. A genius scientist is not more human than a psychiatric patient at the other end of the earth. The world would reward you for who you are essentially, even if it finds it hard to differentiate being from doing. Focus your time and leverage on getting good at the things that your mind sees as play. Essentially you’d spend hours daily getting good at it while it feels like play rather than work. The human mind is very creative when it views work as play. Look inwards to understand what and who you are and then look outwards to find the creative pursuit that allows you to give expression to your inner self. If you can’t find anything outside that allows you to give expression to your inner creativity - then create something new.

Learn how to Learn.

Our world is evolving at the speed of light. Every 18 months, a lot of things become obsolete. New technologies, ways of doing things, information, etc. The only real superpower for staying at the cutting edge of the times is to become a super learner. One of the biggest roadblocks to learning is fear of complexity. To answer that look at this quote:

Do not think that what is hard for you to master is humanly impossible; and if it is humanly possible, consider it is to be within your reach. - Marcus Aurelius

Very few people get to achieve this considering the kind of distractions we have from social media. To get better at learning:

1. Figure out what works for you. Know thyself.
2. Find out how to make your work feel like play.
3. Be open-minded.
4. Document your journey and track it.
5. Break down information into smaller units and assign time to it.
6. Be consistent. Consistency wins intensity every single time.
7. Remove the distractions. Know that your race is against time so guard your time jealously.

I will keep sharing different parts of this article as I progress, selah.