Working Hard and Smart, Bookends and Notion Calendar

1. Work Hard or Work Smart?

Is it better to work hard or work smart?

The truth is to be productive, you need both.

People who only believe in “work hard” can’t see the forest from the trees.

People who proclaim that “work smart” is the only way (alongside “street smarts”, shortcuts and “life hacking”) are really just people with a poor work ethic.

There’s no reason not to work hard and work smart on the right things.

2. Bookends and Environment Changes

Is it possible to get 3-5 major outcomes completed every single day?

Yes, it is.

The way to do this is through using bookends and environment changes.

Bookends first:

These are the boundaries of the start of your productive day and the end of it.

Last century this was typically when you arrived at the office, and when you left for the day. Opening bookend, closing bookend.

Remote work and always-on Internet destroyed this.

So you need to set your own bookends.

I recommend after your morning ritual, and before dinner.

Environmental triggers next:

If you can, use environment changes to help you compartmentalise your days.

Waking up and running your morning ritual in your bedroom and bathroom is one environment.

Taking the dog out for a walk is another.

Sitting at your home office to work is another.

And eating at the kitchen table is yet another.

Different environments, different mindsets, different emotional moods.

Don’t cross-contaminate your environments — don’t work from your phone in bed and don’t pull up your laptop at the kitchen table if you can avoid it.

This is how you knock out 3-5 major outcomes a day and stay sane while doing it.

3. Notion Calendar

Notion recently released Notion Calendar as a way to integrate your normal Google Calendars with the ones generated for Notion databases.

Personally, I’ve always preferred using BusyCal or Fantastical on Mac or even the default Apple Calendar. It also does not support iCloud or Microsoft calendars at the moment.

That being said, I can see a use case for Notion Calendar for teams that have their projects and tasks in Notion, and also for Windows users who don’t really have a good desktop calendar app.

— Aaron

P.S. This newsletter goes out to my email subscribers 1 week before it's syndicated here. Want to be the first to read it?

Sign up here.