Chapter Six

6. Productivity

“To think is easy. To act is difficult. To act as one thinks is the most difficult.”

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Pamela was a marketing director at a small but rapidly growing company in the telecommunications equipment industry. Companies in this industry typically compete on product features, but it would have been tough going up against larger incumbents with deeper pockets. This company had great products but took a different approach, deciding to compete on productivity as well. Their leadership chose to maximize productivity through technology and insights.

Through intelligent use of software tools like Salesforce and Tableau, they automated their marketing, drove their decisions through data-driven insights, and blurred the lines between business and IT. Pamela and her colleagues in marketing understood and got close to their customers, and used sales automation to connect with prospects at just the right moment in their buying cycles. Other companies had similar tools, but this rising star generated much more productivity from them. Through doing so, the company maximized effectiveness and amplified the impact of their products to out-compete larger companies that simply did not move as quickly or efficiently.

A very different example of high productivity is the work of one of my clients, Michel Langlois, a Silicon Valley engineering executive who drove productivity through relationships and delegation. His productivity was based on finding ways to get the results he needed that others couldn’t, often in a fraction of the time. Impressively, he did this across multiple disciplines, from engineering to marketing to human resources. A large part of Michel’s productivity was the way he hired people he could trust, communicated what he needed, then held people accountable for high-performance results. He also enrolled supporters to his cause, often after they were initially indifferent or opposed to his ideas. Due to a disarming mix of clarity, charm, and passion, he succeeded in getting more done through others and inspiring their best work.

He insisted on board-quality content, but did not spend all his time creating slides and reports. Instead, he relied on people he could trust on his team and at firms like mine, so he could focus on gathering input, making decisions, and then sharing and selling his ideas more effectively.

There’s more than one way to define productivity. My neighbor George was a software developer at a large tech firm and was very family-oriented. He woke up at 4:30 a.m. each morning to work out, and he finished his work at 6:00 p.m. every night. He organized his entire working schedule with surgical precision to ensure that he had as much time as possible for his family. Productivity isn’t just about how much we can do at once, how much output we can create, or how much money we make. For some, it is simply freeing up personal time through discipline and prioritization. For George, it was about making the most of being a father and husband. He was a good employee who never skimped on his work responsibilities, but also had no desire to advance his career faster at the potential expense of his family relationships.

Productivity and self-help books are seemingly everywhere. It seems impossible to throw a rock without hitting a book about how to achieve more, hack life, and become superhuman. With all that content available, why aren’t we more productive?

Let’s think about what personal productivity is. In its simplest form, productivity is defined by output created divided by units of input. This translates as measurable, meaningful outcomes divided by the time taken to attain those outcomes. Productivity is not a measure of how many hours a person puts in, or how much they sweat. By definition, the more hours it takes us to achieve a specified outcome, the less productive we are. Working smarter, not harder, is a cliché for a reason. It enables greater productivity.

To improve or even know our productivity, we need to define our goals, because achieving those outcomes is what matters. Do you define goals in terms of work tasks like clearing the email inbox or creating more reports? How about career goals, like to make more money or achieve a certain title? Closer to home, are your goals to spend more time with family, pursue a hobby, or volunteer for a favorite cause? It is important to get specific and not hold back, even if your initial list is long and lacks priorities.

The next question is how do we reach those goals? What’s the minimum effective dose—the smallest amount of work required to achieve the desired result? This is not to suggest skimping at work. In fact, it’s the opposite. It requires knowing our work very well, to determine exactly what we want to accomplish, then do what it takes to accomplish that goal. This realization often brings out personal beliefs and biases in people. First, it means you—not someone else or your email inbox—control your schedule. Even if your manager is telling you what needs to get done, you still have some leeway about how to do it, and to seek out ways of doing it better. When we realize that we can accomplish more, sometimes in a fraction of the time, the question becomes what do we do with the extra time? Is it acceptable to read, take a nap, or even go home?

I have helped several clients optimize their factories through advanced planning and scheduling. When we finished our projects, the clients typically experienced large productivity gains, removing the need for hours of daily production part expediting activities. Production planners sometimes did not know what to do with that extra time, and it was a change management exercise to translate the additional time to true productivity gains. People sometimes feel anxious when they become more productive, because they are faced with new dilemmas. If chasing down components is no longer a big part of my work day, do I have the skills for the more advanced work I should really be doing? If you no longer need to catch up on emails late at night, can you invest in learning, or even simply relax and enjoy the additional time?

Being busy can be a personal security blanket. We may believe that if we’re working hard we are making progress, and eventually we will get where we need to go. Even if we become productive on a given task, we feel we need to fill the additional time with a substitute, equivalent activity. Some companies have moved away from a culture of conspicuous hard work, including a few that block email access for employees on paid time off. An example is German automaker Daimler (Mercedes-Benz), which implemented a “no mail on holiday” email policy that ensures its employees take full advantage of their time off, without fearing an overflowing inbox when they return. Through this policy, employees have the option to set their emails to autodelete while away from the office. Nonetheless, these remain exceptions. At the time of writing, the “stay busy” mentality is still a major workplace problem.

I struggle with these concepts too, and am definitely a work in progress. I tend to follow productivity increases by taking on more commitments, then back away for a while, reestablish my footing, and repeat the cycle. The important thing is to be self-aware, to make sure your approach is right for you, and take stock of where you are on a regular basis.

A big part of becoming more productive is simply to shine a spotlight on the activities that don’t contribute to your productivity. Remove everything that doesn’t belong and you’ll be left with what matters most. This does not require any sophisticated tools, only a healthy, unbiased look at the activities and processes you’re engaged in, and the self-awareness to eliminate those that are unnecessary. Productivity is not about utilizing every life hack and time-saving tool. It is knowing what you want in life and aligning your activities to those goals to have a better chance to achieve them.

When taken to excess, the idea of productivity becomes almost satirical. From the outside, we start to resemble hamsters, running faster and faster on our wheels. There’s no limit to how productive we can become, but we need to ask ourselves why. What goals are we seeking to attain? There are plenty of people listening to podcasts and audiobooks at 1.5x normal speed, using the “too many podcasts, too short a commute” rationale. I get it, and yet the cadence of speaking, replete with the pause for effect, gets lost in the double-time, SmartSpeed silence remover. At the extreme, people can become increasingly impatient. When the headphones come off, normal speech pace becomes maddeningly slow.

Podcasts and time-sensitive news aside, reading a book can and should be a pleasurable experience. Perhaps reading a book slowly is akin to eating a meal slowly. Is it more productive to consume your steak twice as fast, or is it important to enjoy it? On the subject of multitasking, it is tempting to keep an eye on the smartphone while with others, but there’s also something to be said for unplugging and enjoying the moment. Personally, I enjoy tennis; it is physical, outdoors—for the most part—and social. There are cool tech tools that can measure swings, racquet head speed, and court movement. So far, I have resisted the urge to use them, because I want to avoid being tied to a smartphone while playing tennis. At least for now, I don’t want to take away from the tennis experience by my own efforts to become more productive.

Productivity has become an industry in its own right. It has much to offer, but it’s not a panacea. My friend Charlie Hoehn was a productivity machine as he collaborated on highly successful book marketing campaigns for best-selling authors, including Tim Ferriss. He even found a way to turn off the part of his brain that needed sleep (think of the movie Limitless ). Did it make him more productive? In the short-term, yes, but then it fried his circuits. That crash caused him to rethink everything and led him in the opposite direction, looking for ways to reduce his stress levels instead of endlessly amping-up his productivity. Charlie has spoken and written extensively on this topic, captured in his wonderful book Play It Away. Before trying to become hyper-productive, ask yourself what you truly want to achieve. Then, design your strategy so that it meets your true objectives, and keep in mind that more time does not always equal more productivity.

The ancient Greeks had the concept of arête , which translates roughly as “moral virtue.” They believed in education as more than an intellectual pursuit. In their eyes, it involved the mind (logos ), body or emotion (pathos ), and the soul (ethos ). Sound familiar? Yes, these also roughly form the basis of rhetorical, persuasive speech covered in Chapter Two. Intriguingly, these concepts are as relevant today as ever, despite being largely forgotten in the modern world. The balanced combination of all three areas made someone a “whole” person.

At the simplest level, think about people you know who may work too hard, sleep too little, and not eat well—that’s most of us, at some point. Overwork leaves us vulnerable to burnout. Lack of sleep robs us of the time we need to restore and rejuvenate. Poor diet means a dearth of the nutrients we require to focus and be creative. In the long term, pushing to do more and more work is less productive than working smart. We all have deadlines, and sometimes meeting them requires us to get out of balance for a time. However, it is easy to fall into a rut, and then it takes conscious effort to work through it and restore energy. The restorative powers of sleep and exercise are amazing. We know this, and yet seem to have to rediscover it periodically after pushing the envelope a bit too hard.

In summary, take care of your personal logos, pathos , and ethos to help you stay fresh and maintain a healthy perspective. This will also make you more interesting to be around and more empathetic, and make it easier for others to connect with you. In the quest for productivity, these qualities are often neglected in favor of more tactical, short-term, and superficial markers of success, but they’re equally important. Sometimes even more so.

In an industrial society, there was a prevalent view that specialization—reducing one’s role to a rigid set of specific responsibilities, then going deep—was the way to succeed. Even if that view was ever right, we are in the digital age and the norms of industrial society are being reexamined and evolved. The capacity to think critically and creatively, to develop insights and communicate effectively, is more important than ever.

This is a major challenge for the big winners of industrial society. For example, doctors, lawyers, and accountants study for years to perfect their professions. They invest a huge amount of time and money in specialization, on the assumption that the investment will set them up in a satisfying and lucrative career. The same holds true for anyone considering a college degree or trade that requires extensive training. In a world where the market need is changing faster than the time to acquire skills and experience, is a profession worth it? Ironically, the more fluid and rapidly evolving the market, the more valuable the profession, if the core capability is frequently refreshed with newly relevant skills.

This book is not a diet and exercise manual, but it’s worth mentioning a few basics. If you have a passion for sports or going to the gym, great. Otherwise, at least get enough sleep, take vitamins, and drink plenty of water. Find a way of being active that you enjoy, even if that’s walking the dog. Revisit your goals regularly to ensure that you do not drift too far from them.

However hard you work, you can’t do everything you want to do. It is necessary to accept some limits. At the same time, the human body is very resilient. If you used to work out in college, you can soon regain enough strength and stamina to make an appreciable difference to your performance. Too often, people believe that if they have made poor choices in the past, it is too late to make changes. I disagree. We are each a work in progress. We may be the sum total of the choices we’ve made to date, but that also means we can change as we change our choices. Like exponential smoothing, recent changes carry the most significant impact, so don’t let the past get you down.

Automated Productivity

Since the first Industrial Revolution, humans have been automating up and down the value chain. It is a process that continues today, to a degree that would amaze people who lived only a century ago. Imagine explaining the concept of a remote-controlled electric garage door opener to someone living in the early twentieth century.

In the United States, none of us live without automation. The only question is how far we want to automate. A natural place to start is with our email inboxes. Every email represents an ask, a piece of information, or a potential commitment. Imagine your email inbox as a stack of papers on your desk and you will have a better sense of how much work it requires to stay on top of your correspondence. If you have a thousand emails in your inbox, imagine a thousand pieces of paper stacked in an in-tray on your desk. Even worse, many of those emails have documents attached to them, adding to the stack. Seeing that inbox as a physical, verrrrrry high stack, what would you do if someone asked you to take on more work? You’d probably refuse, knowing that you have a lot to do before you can make any more commitments. Yet, many of us happily accept more work when we have a thousand emails waiting to process, because we don’t really see them, or fully consider the time and effort to complete them.

For most of us, the transition from physical to digital is inevitable and empowering. However, it is also good to think in physical terms, for example by picturing how much effort a request will take, so we can visualize our existing commitments and respect the limits of our capacity. Humans have been relating to the physical world since the dawn of time, but we have only recently come to grips with the digital world. Our minds are still wired to think in tangible terms, so translating our electronic requests to physical terms can help us plan and respond more effectively.

Short-Term and Long-Term Productivity

You are no doubt familiar with the parable of the tortoise and the hare. The lesson it offers is that life is a marathon, not a sprint, and the way to be successful is to move slowly and steadily. I disagree with that premise. A career isn’t a marathon. It is built on a series of sprints—periods of intense activity—followed by periods of rest .

The slow and steady approach implies that we are most productive when working at half capacity, but is that really the case? Think back to the key accomplishments in your life. Were they achieved through slow, steady progress, or through bursts of high-intensity activity? Persistent progress does pave the way, but there are moments of truth when we need to push through and do things that are difficult, knowing that we can rest when we reach the other side. If we don’t get after it, we’re not going to win. Someone else will outthink or outwork us, and the opportunity will pass us by.

This should be encouraging. You don’t need to kill yourself with work to succeed. Instead, you need to be prepared to work intensely some of the time. Think about a light switch. It’s either on or it’s off. You can’t turn it half-on and expect it to function—and dimmers are just that: dimmer. By the same token, it is better to focus on work, then rest, than to be constantly, somewhat focused on work.

Reread the fable of the tortoise and the hare and you’ll notice that the hare’s defeat stems not from his strategy, but from his poor decisions. He is complacent, assuming he can’t possibly be beaten. He is overconfident to the point of hubris, gets distracted, and takes a nap. Even then, he loses only by moments. Had he simply sprinted, rested, then sprinted again, remaining humble and focused on his goal, he would have outrun the tortoise with ease .

For many people, this a significant mental shift. They measure themselves by the clock, not by what they accomplish. It can be frightening to make an honest assessment of what you are truly accomplishing and to think about how you can increase productive time. How does this change our approach? It is impossible to run a marathon as though it were a sprint. We’d crash, and never finish. On the other hand, there’s no sense in pacing ourselves through a sprint. Everyone will quickly overtake us. The analogy is simple, but applies to small projects and careers alike. Sprint, then rest, sprint, then rest. It also manifests itself in Agile project work, covered in a later chapter, which even uses terms like “sprint” to define project intervals.

This approach also allows for our goals to change. Although we can say that family is most important in our lives, there are times when a project takes center stage. At other times, we may be focused on a degree program or other personal commitment. Even within work itself, at any given time we’re faced with a swirl of goals and obligations. If we are already committed to the career equivalent of a marathon, it’s a big deal to change course. If we see things as a series of sprints, we can more easily choose a new direction, or course correct after missteps.

To choose a new direction, people need to reflect on their experiences and then take action. Stoicism is an ancient yet still highly relevant philosophy that provides daily downtime to do just that. To bring this philosophy to the masses, Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman created The Daily Stoic Journal. It blends the flexible practicality of the Stoic mindset with the incredibly useful tool of a structured journal for morning and evening reflection.

Some personal development philosophies encourage people to live as though they will die tomorrow. This sounds good, but what would you really do if you knew you only had twenty-four hours to live? You probably wouldn’t go to work. This highlights the distinction between short-term and long-term goals. When you have long-term goals in mind, you’re willing to delay gratification so that you can achieve them. When you only consider short-term objectives, your capacity to delay gratification diminishes greatly.

This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t enjoy life each day. It’s simply to recognize that delayed gratification is an essential part of any plan to become more productive. Without the capacity to delay gratification, there would be no society or long-term progress. Nobody would ever do anything that didn’t bring them immediate satisfaction. When I graduated college, I had a choice between going to work at LTV Steel in East Chicago and going to Texas Instruments in Dallas, which held the promise of high-tech and an industry on the rise. The steel job paid 20 percent more than the one at TI, but I thought working in a high-tech firm was the right move for a freshly minted electrical engineering graduate, who needed to venture out of the Midwest to see a bit more of the world. Less income initially, and less familiarity, but ultimately that decision shaped my entire career.

Sustaining a long-term focus is not easy. Amazon is a good example of a company that does this successfully, forgoing short-term profitability to focus on the goal of being the biggest and best e-commerce retailer, among other things. Of course, it’s easier to take that stance from a position of a $500 billion market cap and stellar record of growth. It was much harder when the company was small and had investors waiting to recoup their investments. To boost your own productivity, think about your long-term goals, then organize your life so that you serve those goals. Hyrum Smith, founder of Franklin Quest and the ubiquitous Franklin Planner, famously said that “It is only when our daily actions are in concert with our long-term goals, we then have a credible claim to inner peace.” That is worth more than any bank statement or corporate title.

Relationships as a Form of Productivity

Productivity is about being effective, not just efficient. There are multiple ways to be effective in a people-centered business such as consulting, some of which may not be obvious at first glance.

For example, have you ever considered the value of friendliness? Many people see life as a zero-sum game, or quid pro quo, only doing things for others when expecting to get something in return. When we take that attitude, we set ourselves up for a highly conditional set of outcomes. That adds stress to our lives, because every interaction, every transaction carries with it uncertainty over whether the other party will be friendly or play fair. An alternative approach is that you can decide to be friendly, simply because it is part of your values and who you are. Others may or may not reciprocate, but you can still decide that being friendly is how you choose to live. In some respects, friendliness becomes your gift to others, and gifts carry no conditions. Without this conditional uncertainty, you may also experience lower stress in your interactions and your relationships.

When we go beyond conventionally defined terms and limitations, we can always set ourselves up to be successful. As an example, large sales proposals carry the implicit question: “What if we don’t win?” If the loss does occur, you could see all that effort as wasted. Alternatively, you could see it as an opportunity to build relationships, to get to know your prospect better, and to learn more about the subject matter. If you’ve conducted yourself with the attitude that you choose to be of service and learn everything you can from the experience, you can succeed even if you don’t attain the immediate outcome you desire.

It’s true that outcomes matter. It is important that you win the deal, complete projects on time, get deliverables approved, and secure funding for your projects. However, the truth is that we don’t always get everything we want. Some outcomes are out of our control, but we can control our attitude, our response to the stimuli that act upon us.

People appreciate being treated with respect, to feel important. That should be a supporting objective for all projects or proposals, for colleagues as well as clients. One way to demonstrate respect is to give credit where it is due. It can be tempting to reference a concept or an insight without giving credit to the people who deserve it, even if unintentionally. If you lead a project, acknowledge the junior members of the team, those who supported it remotely, and whoever contributed intellectual property to the initiative. Make it a point to share compliments and provide positive feedback.

It may appear safer to put up an emotional wall in the workplace, but do not be afraid to show your humanity. This is not to suggest that you should pour your heart out to work colleagues, but allow genuine human connections to emerge. This is especially important in a digital world, where so much communication is conducted online. Taking the time to remember people’s names and relevant facts about their lives is an excellent way to show that you care.

It may seem productive to keep emails as short as possible. People who use email heavily tend to become very brief, even terse, in their written communications, conveying a blunt, all-about-me perception. This may not be their intention, but it may be the impression perceived by their recipients. Taking an extra few moments to personalize emails can pay real dividends and build relationships. Be honest and straightforward in your communications, prizing integrity above expediency. Give and receive feedback graciously, without succumbing to defensiveness and insecurity. It may seem more productive to give negative feedback quickly and be done with it, but invest a little more time and remember that you are speaking with a human being who may experience an emotional reaction to what you say. This takes more time, but is the right thing to do and yields benefits long-term, which ultimately is productive.

Where possible, be encouraging and enthusiastic. Make yourself available for people when they need you. This, too, may seem inefficient, because the times people need you are rarely convenient. However, investing in relationships ultimately pays dividends. Only commit to things that you can and will do. Many of us are people pleasers (guilty as charged). We try to say “yes” to everything and then deal with the consequences as best we can, forgetting that delayed or broken commitments are worse than saying no up front. Saying “no” is harder than saying “yes”. Like strategy, deciding what you won’t do is a courageous act, because it allows you to focus on what you will do. This approach may not win you friends initially, but it will increase respect from your colleagues and your ability to complete what you commit.

Another asset of the professional is a short memory, at least psychologically speaking. Avoid dwelling on mistakes, both your own and those of others. Learn from them and move on. Taken together, the ideas above may not improve your immediate efficiency, but they can undoubtedly improve your effectiveness. That in turn will ultimately make you more productive. In the professional world, we rely on one another. Building relationships is not only a good investment, it makes working with other people more enjoyable, and our work more fulfilling.

Productivity Principles

In this sidebar, we cover productivity principles I have found to be valuable. When followed, these nuggets have served me well, and when ignored, have come back to bite. They can help guide your thinking and behavior, and hopefully can play a role in making you more productive, not simply a more efficient hamster on the wheel of life.

Generate insight . As a professional, your job is to generate insight, not just output. Always be thinking how you can help your clients or colleagues learn something new.

Collaborate . Collaboration and teamwork are essential elements of the consultant role. No matter how good you are, no individual knows everything or can make a project successful on their own.

Have fun . Find aspects of your work that you enjoy, and that you would do even if you weren’t getting paid. This could be conducting client research, managing budgets, or training new hires.

Communicate . Communication may feel like an unproductive use of time. Perhaps it feels like it helps others keep tabs on you, but has no personal value. However, communication updates are needed for governance and to request help. It is important to find a balance, communicating enough to keep people informed, but not spending so much time on updates that it takes away from your own work.

Live with integrity . When you leave work for the day, you should feel good about what you’ve accomplished. If what you did was splashed across the front page of the Wall Street Journal tomorrow, would you be proud? It doesn’t need to be an Enron whistleblower situation, perhaps simply taking the high road in a contentious discussion and not resorting to gossip or slander. This is especially true when you’re under pressure to make decisions.

Build your success on the success of your clients . Many of us think that our top priority is to make ourselves successful. While we need to act in enlightened self-interest, the best way to do this is to focus first on making our clients (customers) successful, then our colleagues, and finally ourselves. If our goals are aligned, this other-centric focus should set us up for success as well, bringing the added benefit of wider support from others.

Deliver honest feedback . When you visit a doctor, you don’t want them to tell you that you are healthy if it’s not true. By the same token, you have a responsibility as a professional to deliver candid feedback. There is no reason to be disagreeable, but it’s important to be honest. This shows respect and allows both parties to move forward.

Keep commitments and deliver finished product . In consulting, we use the phrase “client-ready,” and my favorite, “done-done.” Completed, checked, proofed, and ready to turn in as a professional contract deliverable. Many professionals submit work that is good but still contains a few errors. The manager, partner, or even worse, the client, should not be the final editor. Work should be done-done. This is the most important differentiator between a good worker and a true professional.

Navigate organizational politics . Organizational dynamics play a significant, if largely unseen, role in decision-making. Within your own company and in client organizations, be aware of these dynamics without getting caught up in the drama.

Share information . You may imagine that hoarding information gives you power, but in a firm of knowledge workers, overall effectiveness depends on you sharing what you know with your colleagues, while you hope they do the same.

Bring solutions . As you advance in your career, you will find that people bring problems far more often than solutions. It is rare that someone brings an issue, along with a few recommendations, and provides a few prioritized recommendations. If you can do that, you will be noticed and appreciated .

Become known for something . Develop a personal brand, and find an area to excel. Do you know a process or industry sector? Even if you are at the beginning of your career, can you take an idea and turn it into an effective visual? Can you quickly analyze data and develop insights? Whatever your “superpower,” it is vital that you find a way to stand out. Even if it takes some time, simply focusing on this makes a difference.

Carry a motivational card . Tom Hopkins’s 1980 book, How to Master the Art of Selling , is considered the best sales book ever written. He lived by a phrase he referred to as the “golden dozen.” Twelve words: “I must do the most productive thing possible at every given moment.” I still have the card I wrote those words on in 1988. The insight I discovered using Hopkins’s phrase is that the most productive thing possible isn’t always the most obvious. Sometimes it is completing a task, while at other times it is recharging your personal batteries, or unplugging with family. You can find your own phrase, but choose something that stares you in the face and guides your priorities.

Remember that everything counts . Whether we like it or not, we only have a certain amount of time on this planet. When we remember that everything counts, we make more deliberate choices. It doesn’t mean we should be wracked with guilt or avoid making choices; just know that each decision matters and look forward to the consequences of your actions.

Act like you belong . Consulting is a competitive field, and so is any other profession worth entering. When you initially step into the arena, you’ll likely be burdened by doubts and insecurities. Don’t be arrogant, but do trust your abilities and demonstrate what you can do. Others will admire the effort and authenticity.

Practice gratitude . Whatever is happening in your life, you do not need to look far to see people in far worse situations. It is not always easy to maintain a sense of gratitude, but it’s a skill worth cultivating. At the time of this writing, I recently returned from a visit to Berlin, where I stood in front of the Reichstag and the site that was once the SS headquarters. Millions of people were tortured and killed by the Nazis, through no fault of their own. If you have food on the table, freedom of activity, and the opportunity to work in a field you enjoy, you have plenty of reason to be grateful.

Be good at what you do and difficult to replace . Want to improve your income? The amount you are paid will depend on your ability to do what you do, the difficulty of your role, and how difficult it is to replace you. If you want to change what you’re paid, change these things.

Face your fears . When you do what you fear most, you control fear. We are afraid of the unknown but have the capability to get past these fears. How? A little at a time, venturing outside our comfort zone, or perhaps by doing something bold that is frightening but potentially exciting as well. I have gone through this cycle multiple times in my life, and all good things have ultimately come from facing my fears at some level. Whatever strategy you choose, chip away at your fears—the result is worth the effort.

Short-interval scheduling . The Pomodoro technique was invented by Italian Francesco Cirillo in the 1980s, as a method of breaking down tasks into smaller increments. He found that work shrunk or increased depending on how much time was allocated to it. By forcing himself to break his work into small chunks, he became very productive. The technique is named after Cirillo’s tomato-shaped timer. What is the Italian word for tomato? Pomodoro, of course.

Journal . As mentioned in the chapter on learning, keep a record of your thoughts and ideas. This can be intimidating, because you may be tempted to compare yourself with great journalers like Leonardo da Vinci and Ernest Hemingway. Write for yourself, don’t worry about posterity. If you want more structure to get started, try The Five-Minute Journal . It was started by my friend Alex Ikonn and provides a quick yet psychologically significant way to record morning and evening reflections. Journaling draws out inspiration that might otherwise never see the light of day, giving you a fresh perspective on challenges and opportunities. If you’re uncertain how to start, when you wake up ask yourself what you’re grateful for, or what you want to accomplish. Write an affirmation. In the evening, ask yourself what was the greatest part of the day. What are you satisfied with? What would you like to have done differently?

Procrastination

Procrastination gets a bad rap. Sometimes, procrastination is a window into useful information, and it can be an effective prioritization tool. It may not make sense to do the thing we’re putting off. Perhaps it isn’t important, and there may be so much uncertainty that it should be postponed until we can complete the task once, without fear of rework. On the other hand, sometimes procrastination is truly a way of delaying tasks that we need to complete. The key is learning to tell the difference. One way to do this is to be aware of your emotional response. Are you frightened of the task, while knowing that you need to face that fear? Or are you weighed down by other priorities?

We all have an enormous number of requests competing for our time and energy. Instead of giving every item equal status, consider categorizing them in this way, as described by Stephen Covey in his famous book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People :

If you procrastinate on the tasks in quadrants I or II, you need to muster your willpower and do what you need to do. If you procrastinate on tasks in quadrant IV, congratulate yourself—they were a waste of your time anyway. Initially, we think all our tasks fall into category one or two, but unless we’re careful, wastes of time find their way onto our schedule. Why? Because they may be important to someone else. However, someone else’s priority is not necessarily your own.

I subscribe to the Economist , one of the best news publications on the planet, and recommend it to anyone who wishes to cultivate a thoughtful, content-rich viewpoint on world affairs. I believe everything in the magazine is worth reading, but I never read every article because it takes a serious amount of time. That used to bother me, until I realized that even a quick scan and a selective reading of the most interesting articles is still worth more to me than other news content options. Choose your battles, prioritize what’s most important, and don’t beat yourself up over everything else.

Productivity on Your Terms

The truth for most people is that you can do anything you want, but you can’t do everything you want. You must prioritize. If you don’t do this consciously, make no mistake: you are already doing so unconsciously. You can do one or two things very well, but not four or five. If you spread yourself too thinly, you will have a lot of variety in your life, but you won’t master anything.

Over the span of your life, there may be times when you choose to focus most of your attention on your career. At other times, you may choose to pursue another degree, care for a loved one, go all in on sports, or volunteer in your community. At some stage, you will find that you can’t sustain all your interests and you have to make some decisions. In my experience, focusing on up to two areas is possible. For example, prioritizing family and work is a realistic goal. However, the wheels start to come off when you try to sustain more than two major priorities at once, say pursue another college degree on top of everything else. You simply won’t have enough time and energy to give them everything you have. For those special situations when you have to do this, it is important to be honest with yourself and communicate with others about the impact, so that you can set and meet expectations.

However hard you try, you will never make everyone happy. As an adult, you must decide who gets your time and attention, and who doesn’t. Again, you can make a proactive choice about this, or you can evade the choice and allow others to make it for you. Proactivity is empowering, but it also carries the burden of responsibility. It requires you to consciously make decisions that de-prioritize certain people and certain areas of your life. Passiveness may seem an alluring way to avoid responsibility, but it can create more pain, for yourself and others, because it leaves you vulnerable to simply following the priorities of others. This is tempting as a people pleaser, but impossible to sustain and still live life on your terms .

True productivity is effectiveness based on prioritization, not merely efficiency. Choose what to do, and reevaluate as needed. Embrace efficiency, but not at the expense of your humanity.