Supercharge your productivity - Accomplish more work in 2 hours than most people do in 2 weeks

A lot of people out there, including myself, struggle with the inability to accomplish a great deal of work in a short span of time. We end up spending a few weeks on a task that could be completed within 2-4 hours, only if we are able to sit at one place and focus on the task at hand. So over the last past few months, I have been wondering and researching about a process or method that can guide me to achieve more work in a short period of time, instead of investing weeks on it. I have tried this method a few times, and I have found it very useful. I am sharing it with you all below with hope that you guys will also find this very effective and useful.

1. Create a focus playlist
2. Prime yourself
3. Work for 1.5 - 2 hours
4. Separate analytical and creative tasks
5. Remove distractions
6. Set 1 goal for each work block
7. Reflect
8. Reward yourself

Let’s deep dive into each one of these

1) Create a focus playlist

• Focus Playlist is a list of songs of musicals that help you get into the flow of focus faster. Now, some of us might think that music is a distraction for me. But in my experience after the initial 5 to 10 minutes of listening to the music and getting into the trance, it become effortless for me to get into the deep work-flow. It’s like music helps me focus away from the plethora of thoughts going inside my mind. To help you with this, I am listing below some of the musicals/ soundtrack that I tune in, when I want to get into the flow of deep work. They help me get into deep work twice faster than normal.?
• The Dark Knight Trilogy (my favourite being The Dark Knight)
• He’s a pirate from The Pirates of the Caribbean (my favourite - the slow piano version)
• Game of thrones (my favourite - the last of the starks)
• Drive
• Dune
• TENET?
• Dunkirk?
• Ad Astra?
• Inception
• Interstellar?

2) Prime yourself

Now we all know that our mind requires some time to get into a flow like state of deep work. We all experience some inexplicable resistance before starting any work that requires commitment of two to three hours, a lot of the times this mental resistance is so powerful that it simply puts us off from commencing such type of deep work type commitment. Hence it is required that we give like 10 minutes to 30 minutes time on a supplementary activity that can help prepare our mind to get into deep work in a very smooth manner. Below are some tips that help me prepare my mind for the an activity.

• 8 hours of sleep primes me to focus on any work. This is why I prefer to take up activities that require deep work (like studying a new topic, writing a blog like this one, organizing myself and surroundings, putting together content for any important business meeting) early in the morning after a decent sleep of 6 to 8 hours.
• 30 minutes of reading primes me to write. When I want to do creative writing (like a blog on any topic, or a few pages of business note on a new proposal, or make a presentation for a new project), I prefer to read for 20-30 minutes on a relevant topic, prior to starting the work. Here I prefer to read from a physical book, or on my kindle instead of reading on my laptop screen. This is to avoid exposure to the electronic light during this short time. I personally feel that I easily get my mind to prime state. When I read a book by holding it in my hands, the feeling of holding a book in my hand simply gives me a great creative feeling.
• 10 minutes of planning primes me to organize. When I want to organize for my week ahead (I typically do this over the weekend for the upcoming week), it takes me around 1 to 1.5 hours. So instead to getting directly into the weekly planning activity, I simply list down my top current priorities (both in professional life, and personal life), a list of like 6 to 10 important things. And I create this list on a piece of paper, not on my laptop. Simply holding a pen in my hand, and jotting down the priorities on a notepad stimulates my mind to get into the groove of planning for a horizon of the next one to three weeks.

3) Schedule multiple deep work sessions for 1.5 to 2 hours

Many a times, we need to do deep work for a few hours together, like 6 to 8 hours a day, In situations like appearing for an exam, or an interview, or writing a blog, or writing an article or a novel, may be making a business plan, or preparing for a very important client meeting. In such situations, instead of sitting in a place for longer durations, we should split up a large full day session of 6 to 8 hours, into smaller sessions of 1.5 to 2 hours. And there should be a break of 10-15 minutes after completion of each session. Let me explain why I am suggesting this. Generally, it takes us 20-30 minutes to get into the flow state. Once into the flow state, it takes around 1.5-2 hours before our focus declines. Hence, if we take a break too early, we won’t get into flow. But if we don't take a break, we'll work inefficiently.

4) ? ? Separate the tasks based on their type

To get maximum output from deep work sessions, we should plan to complete similar types of tasks together in one session. We should categorise tasks based on their type, and then batch similar tasks into a deep work session. Two of the biggest categories that I personally use are (1) Analytica tasks: (2) Creative tasks.?

I batch the following analytical tasks together into two or three deep-work sessions per week

• Organisation?
• Research?
• Planning

I batch the following creative tasks together into two or three deep-work sessions per week

• Writing?
• Designing?
• Brainstorming

Our brain wastes energy to adjust when we switch from one category of task to other category. Hence we should avoid switching between categories during a deep work session. However, when we switch tasks within the same category, the wastage of energy and focus are less, hence its ok to club the same type of tasks together into a single deep work session. This too, only when the tasks at hand required less time than our typical deep work session of 1.5 to two hours.

5) Remove Distractions

The biggest enemy of productivity during deep work sessions are distractions. Hence, we must remove all sorts of distractions during our deep work sessions. There could be multiple types of distractions, and hence it’s important to be mindful about these distractions and remove them from our deep work environment.

• Too much noise? Use noise-cancelling earbuds
• Distracting websites? Use a website/app blocker
• Too much going at home? Go to a coffee shop

It's impossible to get distracted when it's not an option.

6) Set one goal for each deep work time block

One more trick to be insanely productive during a deep work session, is to breakdown a deep work session into 3 smaller time blocks of 30-40 minutes each. Likewise, break down your larger task of 90 minutes into 3 smaller tasks that we can accomplish in 30-40 minutes. Now we have broken down our larger 90-120 minutes of the deep work session into 3 smaller work time blocks of 30-40 minutes each with each block having its own task deliverable. We should focus on one task at a time, and move onto the next one only when the current task at hand is completed. Knowing what we need to do when we are in the flow, prevents us from getting distracted with unproductive “busy work”.

7) Reflect

In order to continuously improve our productivity and output of the deep work sessions day on day, we need to create a self feedback loop. The best way to do this is to reflect on our deep work sessions, after the session is completed. This reflection time does not need to be more than 10 minutes at max. During my reflection sessions, I typically look at what went good, what went bad and what were the reasons. I check on things like?

• Whether the length of the work blocks were good or need changes
• Do I need to change the sequence of the tasks
• Do I need to change the timing of the deep work (I usually prefer early morning)

Basically, the goal here is to optimise the next session, and keep doing it for each and every next session with the objective of continuous improvement.

8) Reward yourself

The importance of reward and recognition is very high in boosting productivity for both individuals and teams, in personal life and at work. Create a personal reward and recognition program for yourself. Every time you complete some meaningful work, reward yourself, no matter how small the reward is. I use the following things to reward myself after every successful deep work session.

• Do something fun, like playing with my kids for 10-15 minutes
• Watch Netflix or YouTube video, or listen to my favorite song
• Go on Twitter, play a video game
• Send a congratulatory email to yourself with brief of what you achieved and why it makes you a superhero?

This makes our brain associate positive feelings with work, and next time we go to work it'll be 10x easier and we will be more enthusiastic and productive.

9) ? ? Summary

In this article, we looked at the method to be super-productive and accomplish more work in 2 hours than 95% of people do in 2 weeks. In a nutshell, here is the process

1. Create a focus playlist
2. Prime yourself
3. Work for 1.5 - 2 hours
4. Separate analytical and creative tasks
5. Remove distractions
6. Set 1 goal for each work block
7. Reflect
8. Reward yourself

Best of luck to you for implementing these in your life and benefit from them immensely.

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