Personal Productivity5/22/2014Nitin Julka (http://www.linkedin.com/in/nitinjulka)

What personal productivity challenges

do you face?

Information Overload

E-mail

What is your personal productivity philosophy?

My Answer: Get everything out of

your head and into your trusted

systems

Productivity Tools

Productivity Tactics

● 100% consistent with 100% follow through● Single task, but multi-project (with minimal

task-switching and MITs)● Outsource, delegate, unsubscribe, filter,

cancel, or delete (until you are comfortable with your scope)

● Inbox 0● Facilitate and attend good meetings

Task and Project Management● Define 1-3 Most Important Tasks (MITs) each

day, week, and quarter● Review active projects and next steps each

week● Review “some day” projects at a recurring

interval of your choiceI try to get my MITs done in the morning before anyone gets into the office.

I have turned off popups, buzzes, etc.

Inbox 0

Overarching Goals: ● Bring your inbox down to 0 each day or

week● Only touch an e-mail once● Schedule time for e-mail (eg. 11:00AM and

4:00PM each day) ● Do not multi-task

The following pages are a step by step plan

Inbox 0● Step 1: Delete or consolidate all labels.

Mine:o Account Infoo Newsletters

● Step 2: Set up auto-filters

Inbox 0● Step 3: Unsubscribe to all newsletters,

mailing lists, etc. that you don’t read● Step 4: When e-mailing, batch process e-

mails in focused chunks of time. Try not to skim during the day.

● Step 5: Weekly review. Each week, schedule a significant amount of time (4 hours?) to clear your inbox (if it’s not at 0).

How to Run a Meeting

● Keep a list/agenda with expected outcomes, links to detailed docs, and share it in advance

● Ask if anyone has any thoughts “top of mind”● Go through the list, keeping it action-oriented, and

updating the follow ups, owners, and expected timelines

● Ask everyone for feedback● E-mail debrief (unless everything is captured in

shared doc)

Scope, Memory, Schedules, and Creativity

People often struggle with too much information is coming in.

● Cal Newport on “Treat your mind as you would a private garden,” “Hard Focus,” and “Fixed Schedule Productivity.”

● Piotr Wozniak on “spaced repetition.”● John Halamka proposes “open access scheduling,” and “only handle it

once.”● Paul Graham proposes a “Maker’s schedule”● Tim Ferriss “takes notes like some people take drugs” and doesn’t skim e-

mails● Jerry Senfield suggests “don’t break the chain.”● Maneesh Sethi on how to hire an assistant on Craigslist

Treat Your Mind As You Would a Private Garden

“Living the focused life is not about trying to feel happy all the time…rather, it’s about treating your mind as you would a private garden and being as careful as possible about what you introduce and allow to grow there.” Winifred Gallagher

“I’ll start with an admission: I spend time, every day, tending to my mind. For example, I practice walking meditation each morning, and I use a shutdown routine, backed by extensive organization systems, to free my thoughts from work-related rumination during the evenings. These are just two examples from a large and aggressive collection of strategies I dedicate to cultivating my focus — a collection I review and polish once a week.” - Cal Newport

On the Value of Hard Focus

“If I’m asked what the next most important quality is for a novelist, that’s easy too: focus — the ability to concentrate all your limited talents on whatever’s critical at the moment. Without that you can’t accomplish anything of value...Fortunately [sustaining focus for a long period of time] can be acquired and sharpened through training.” - Haruki Marukami

“As my graduate student experience progressed, I systematically increased the amount of time I would force myself to work continuously without a break to seek unrelated stimulation.” - Cal Newport, author of Be So Good They Can’t Ignore You

Spaced Repetition

http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-05/ff_wozniak?currentPage=all

His advice was straightforward yet strangely terrible: You must clarify your goals, gain knowledge through spaced repetition, preserve health, work steadily, minimize stress, refuse interruption, and never resist sleep when tired. This should lead to radically improved intelligence and creativity. The only cost: turning your back on every convention of social life.

Maker vs. Manager

http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.htmlThere are two types of schedule, which I'll call the manager's schedule and the maker's schedule. The manager's schedule is for bosses. It's embodied in the traditional appointment book, with each day cut into one hour intervals. You can block off several hours for a single task if you need to, but by default you change what you're doing every hour...Most powerful people are on the manager's schedule. It's the schedule of command. But there's another way of using time that's common among people who make things, like programmers and writers. They [makers] generally prefer to use time in units of half a day at least. You can't write or program well in units of an hour. That's barely enough time to get started.When you're operating on the maker's schedule, meetings are a disaster. A single meeting can blow a whole afternoon, by breaking it into two pieces each too small to do anything hard in. Plus you have to remember to go to the meeting...For someone on the maker's schedule, having a meeting is like throwing an exception. It doesn't merely cause you to switch from one task to another; it changes the mode in which you work.... If I know the afternoon is going to be broken up, I'm slightly less likely to start something ambitious in the morning.

Open Access Schedulinghttp://geekdoctor.blogspot.com/2009/11/open-access-scheduling-model-for.htmlEvery day I receive over 1000 emails. A small number of those emails are complex problems that require multi-stakeholder coordination. Although I can try to solve such problems via email, my rule is that if more than 3 rounds of emails go back and forth about an issue, it's time to pick up the phone or have a meeting. However, scheduling a meeting among senior managers in a large organization can take a month. By that time, the issue has either become a much larger problem or the opportunity to rapidly move forward has been lost. So much for nimble decisionmaking.How can we improve this situation?I suggest we learn from the Open Access Scheduling model used in primary care.Patients who are sick today do not want an appointment in three weeks - they need to be seen today.In the past, clinicians noted they were so busy that their calendars were backlogged weeks to months.But wait - if you see 15 patients a per day, a backlogged calendar does not imply you are seeing more patients. Why not work through the backlog and then leave 50% of the calendar open each day for the patients who are sick each day - solve today's problems today.The same thing can be applied to our administrative lives. Each day there are challenges created by customers, employees, and the external world. If we left 50% of our calendars open each day for solving today's problems today, we would reduce stress, enhance communication, and improve efficiency.

Fixed Schedule Productivityhttp://calnewport.com/blog/2008/02/15/fixed-schedule-productivity-how-i-accomplish-a-large-amount-of-work-in-a-small-number-of-work-hours/

The system work as follows:1. Choose a schedule of work hours that you think provides the ideal balance of effort and relaxation.2. Do whatever it takes to avoid violating this schedule.

Here’s a simple truth: to stick to your ideal schedule will require some drastic actions. For example, you may have to:● Dramatically cut back on the number of projects you are working on.● Ruthlessly cull inefficient habits from your daily schedule.● Risk mildly annoying or upsetting some people in exchange for large gains in time freedom .● Stop procrastinating.

Only Handle it Once

http://geekdoctor.blogspot.com/2012/01/only-handle-it-once-ohio.html

The end result is that for every document I'm asked to read, every report I'm ask to write, and every situation I'm asked to management, I only handle the materials once…

It's processed and it's done without delay or a growing inbox. I work hard not to be the rate limiting step to any process.

Yes, it can be difficult to juggle the Only Handle it Once (OHIO) approach during a day packed with meetings. Given that unplanned work and the management of email has become 50% of our jobs, I try to structure my day with no more than 5 hours of planned meetings, leaving the rest of the time to bring closure to the issues discussed in the meetings and complete the other work that arrives.

Mental “Overhead” from Skimming E-mail

http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/10/25/weapons-of-mass-distractions-and-the-art-of-letting-bad-things-happen/

As tempting as it is to “just check e-mail for one minute,” I didn’t do it. I know from experience that any problem found in the inbox will linger on the brain for hours or days after you shut-down the computer, rendering “free time” useless with preoccupation. It’s the worst of states, where you experience neither relaxation nor productivity. Be focused on work or focused on something else, never in-between.

I Take Notes like Some People Take Drugs

http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/12/05/how-to-take-notes-like-an-alpha-geek-plus-my-2600-date-challenge/

I trust the weakest pen more than the strongest memory, and note taking is—in my experience—one of the most important skills for converting excessive information into precise action and follow-up.

Jerry Seinfeld Suggests “Don’t break the Chain”

http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-secretHe revealed a unique calendar system he uses to pressure himself to write. Here's how it works.

He told me to get a big wall calendar that has a whole year on one page and hang it on a prominent wall. The next step was to get a big red magic marker.

He said for each day that I do my task of writing, I get to put a big red X over that day. "After a few days you'll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You'll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain."

"Don't break the chain," he said again for emphasis.

How to Hire an Assistant on Craigslist

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7sfaysj9bs

Resources

● Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen

● 4 Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss● Power of Less by Leo Babauta● One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The

Kaizen Way by Robert Maurer● So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal

Newport