Productivity-maxxing

What is productivity-maxxing

Do you ever feel overwhelmed? Anxious about having too much on your plate? Let me share with you some of my productivity tips that will hopefully work for you too.

Over the years I’ve explored many productivity ideas and it turns out that I really enjoy trying new ones. Most of them help me by reducing mental load and free my mind to focus on being creative. To me productivity-maxxing means one thing: ruthlessly optimizing my day for more positive output.

For example while checking my emails I don’t descend into deep email chains. I simply take note of something that needs following up on later and I continue going through my emails. This way the process takes no longer than 5 minutes and then I can forget about emails for most of the day. I find that the same thing would often take me 30 minutes otherwise.

Producticity-maxxing has become quite a hobby of mine by now, because it really adds up over the years if I can save a minute each day.

Why it became necessary

Looking back at myself just after graduating I was eager to prove everyone how smart I was and how much I could achieve through pleasing my co-workers and users. So I took on as many projects as I was able to finish while clocking in a LOT of overtime. I worked until 7-8 pm every night from soon after waking up. I even spent my weekends working because I did not have much else to do for 2-3 years. It wasn’t healthy and I came close to burning out, but let’s talk about that some other time.

It did not matter how hard I tried, eventually life happened and unplanned issues came up. These would have been fine if I wasn’t already stretched too thin. This created my need to optimize my productivity.

Bullet journaling

This is still my biggest breakthrough and what ignited this passion of mine. As it turns out I really struggle to keep organized on a busy day at work. This co-worker asks me to reset their password, my manager wants an update on a project, my team-mate wants to book a meeting in the afternoon, ohh and don’t forget to email the lawyer to ask for an update.

It is impossible for me to keep all these things in my head and not forget about something.

With a bullet journal remembering is easy. Just put down a task for today and move on. Things became instantly out-of-mind and this removed a lot of mental fatigue from my every days.

I started with a physical journal, but quickly felt that I was missing out by not being able to search through my notes. Then I bought an iPad for hand writing these notes, but that wasn’t actually working. I now feel like this was a mistake and I would encourage anyone to instead try a free app before buying any hardware for a bullet journal.

Nowadays; I use a free app called Logseq as my journal. This app fits naturally with bullet journaling with its daily pages and tags. Copying a task’s reference into the next day helps me track progress seamlessly when a task takes multiple days.

One added benefit of this is that I can always look back in my journal and answer the question “What did you do last week?”. A tag to keep track of impactful contributions makes my life much easier at performance evaluation time.

For an example on how to use Logseq as a work journal check out this video.

Second brain

For my personal-life I much prefer using my second brain.

Tiago starts off this book with the fact that our brain is not good at remembering things perfectly (certainly not mine) and it is not good at keeping previous thoughts organized. Your second, silicon based brain on the other hand is perfect for these purposes.

I find this organization method to be better suited for longer-term projects where things need to be pulled up months later. It’s also just so simple to follow. I never have to think about where a new note goes, I just follow the underlying PARA method. The PARA method organizes notes into four categories: Projects, Areas, Resources, or Archives. It helps me quickly sort where new information belongs.

I personally use Notion for this for no particular reason other than it syncs between my phone and computer effortlessly.

Again, this helps me remove mental fatigue from my life.

Readwise

Readwise is a service that collects highlights from different sources, for example the books I read, the Youtube videos I watch and resurfaces these highlights every so often. This helps a lot with long-term recollection of ideas and helps us connect different ideas together.

Reader is also an excellent read later app and I’m happy to finally have something to replace Pocket.

Through Readwise all of my highlights export into my Second Brain effortlessly. It’s wonderful!

Other things that work for me

• Deep work: This book explains the flow state that I noticed while attending university and explains how to reach it.
• LOFI music: I actually saw a Youtube video recently that explains how they work. I’m a big fan! You might also catch me at work listening to some EDM. Here’s the one I was listening to today.

Calendar blocking

Calendar blocking means that every task gets their own uninterrupted time block on your calendar. The big idea is that by scheduling most of your day in advance you never have to ask the question: “What should I be doing right now?”.

I think the underlying idea is great: bunch related tasks together to allow deep work to take place. While I haven’t fully adopted calendar blocking yet, I think it has a lot of potential.”

This technique also removes mental fatigue, so I have high hopes for it.

If there’s any idea that you think I missed please let me know. My email can be found on the bottom of the page.