One thing that you've changed in your daily routine that increased your productivity 10x (or so)?
Hey makers and hackers,
Being en entrepreneur I always look for ways to increase my productivity or get better results at what i do, so i thought that there're might be hacks that we could share with each other.
I'll start.
Probably nothing has helped me as much as meditation in the past 5+ years. If i do it every day, my focus increases, my mood is much better, i feel a lot less stressed, my intuition is working for me and so on. Usually i i set an alarm on my phone for 21 minute and try to focus on my breath and keep rejecting all of the thoughts that keep popping up in my head. I'd just label each new thought as "okay here's another thought" and let it go. I think i got this idea from someone on Tim Ferris show, and it definitely works for me.
Now share your ideas!
I started to actually work instead of reading productivity blogs on medium.
Kidding. On a more serious note, really just get shit done. Invest also in your health (workout, meditation, good food, sleeping) and in your relationships (toxic people around you make it harder to get stuff done, as well as a conflict or argument with your loved ones makes it hard to concentrate on work).
Start saying NO to people
100% this
As I say often to myself : "Say NO to others, to say YES to yourself"
Exercising. I'm doing a minimum of 3 miles per day on a bike, have not missed a day in 7 weeks so far.
It's only a small amount but a) it's better than nothing and b) it's something I can control in my life which makes me feel good - so much stuff is out of our control it can feel like we're being lead by life rather than grabbing it by the balls and doing our own thing.
So yea - exercise, look after yourself even if it is for a few minutes a day. Even if anything else you do crashes and burns, at least you'll be left with a mind and body that can cope.
yeah can't agree more;
i personally hit the gym 3 times a week, but that's not enough; want to get back into habit of running every morning, i used to do it but then i stopped for a day, then for two days, then three.. and then i just stopped running at all.
So i'd definitely recommend to continue cycling very day and not to have any breaks ;)
get back on it man :) Just Do It :)
The most important thing for me is to work on the right things. Spending 3 months working 12 hours/day on the wrong thing is worth less than spending a week working 4 hours/day on the right thing. So productivity for me largely comes down to reading, learning, analysis, planning, talking to people, validating my ideas, sanity checking, etc., rather than simply doing the work itself. The other side of this coin is saying no to lots of distracting good-but-not-the-best things.
Second is delegating. There's only one of you. You only have so many hours in the day. Learn to delegate tasks and you can get 1000x more work done. It requires trust, and it requires money, but it's almost always worth it.
Third is productivity/efficiency hacks. On the micro-scale, I try to develop habits around putting myself in positions where I'm liable to do lots of work. For example, putting on my website blocker, muting my phone, turning off chat, not taking my laptop to bed, going to the office, etc. These give me 2-4x improvements in productivity, not by making me a superhuman, but instead by helping me avoid majorly bad things. On the macro-scale I do the same and just try to avoid bad things. The major worry here is burnout. I try to take breaks and enjoy life, so work is always interesting, so I don't get into ruts of burnout that last days or weeks.
I'm having some trouble defining the right thing to build and that has been a bit paralyzing. What's your process on this step?
I often build the wrong things, too. All you can do is lots of analysis. Do you understand your market? Do you understand what they want, and why they will get value from what you've built vs other alternatives vs simply not using anything? Based on what they want, how often will they use what you've build, and for long before they quit? How much will they pay? How can you get what you're building in front of them, and at an affordable price point? Etc.
No easy answers to these questions, and there won't be a single moment in time when you just "know" the answers. It's a process that lasts a long time. But I like to think that asking the right questions is half the battle.
Thanks 👍
Thanks Allen,
i really like this piece:
that's so true that high productivity doesn't just come out of work itself or scheduling etc, but rather out of daily routines that we develop.
I also believe that working on the wrong things is something that a lot of IH struggle with, i'm no exception.
Burn outs are bad. Like, really bad. I have had an experience of working 10-14 hours a day (or basically not having life at all) for more than a year. It literally crashed me mentally after that year. I couldn't even realize how many mistakes i was making at that time which in the end led to the failure of my startup. So i'd just say that work life balance is an actual thing and shouldn't be ignored, no matter what type of goals you are after.
The biggest change for me was starting every morning by generating a list of the tasks I wanted to complete today, and how I would complete them.
Adding an estimated time to completion is also very helpful.
For instance, might be something like:
Add animation feature to app (4 hours)
Add d3.js
Create component wrapping SVG
Connect data store to D3 for animation
Code Review for the signup-page bug (1 hour)
Meeting about hiring a new developer (1 hour)
This was adapted from a productivity system called Getting Things Done (GTD) that my grad-school supervisor made all his students read. At the time it seemed like mostly nonsense, but since implementing it I have definitely become more productive.
i actually like this idea, going to try it for myself!
I have installed "Block Site" extension for Chrome and blocked all the time wasters (from Facebook, through YouTube to News Sites).
This saved me 1-2 hours a day surely.
I stopped drinking alcohol for a month and it made a huge difference. I was more productive and I felt really good. I also find that some food energized me, while other foods make me tired.
There are so many small things that make you more productive that the tips in themselves start becoming a distraction.
So I try to systematise it:
Every week I list out the things I'm focusing on, and the habits I'm trying to implement. Then I make sure I track where my time is going and which habits I actually stick to. At the end of each week I look at if they worked or not, and here's the important thing, I discard what didn't work. I don't "try harder" or "try it differently". I stop doing it.
Because there's always more stuff that sounds interesting.
So here's what I'm currently doing that has stuck more than a week, in order of priority:
Sleep.
Meditate daily.
Work out (I lift heavy weights three times a week).
Only do one thing at a time, write down the stuff I think of and stay with the thing until done or it has become less important.
Don't drink coffee after lunch.
For the last month I started sleeping early ~10pm, waking up ~5am and after a coffee/shower working till mid-day is more productive than ever. It is near 7 hours of uninterrupted time.
3 things I do that definitely help me be more productive or at least feel more productive are:
Have a black coffee and read for 30 minutes first thing in the morning. Non-fiction, business related.
Follow this by writing for 30 minutes - developing a writing habit by doing a Medium series. Using this to teach myself the habit of regular content creation.
Exercise - Gym or training before going to work. This probably has the single biggest impact on the mood for the day.
All 3 combined help me feel that if I did nothing else for the rest of the day, I'd have achieved something.
Not setting an alarm clock to wake myself up :)
It directly impacts my sleep cycle, resulting in a better quality of sleep and thus increasing my cognitive focus.
Focus is the root of productivity. Also called "Deep Work" by Cal Newport.
I love the alarm thing. Hard to do if you have office hours, but really great way to live.
There's a very nice and helpful article about this topic on Medium:
https://medium.com/thrive-global/this-morning-routine-will-make-you-a-millionaire-f2309d8005aa
thanks! there's a ton of good info (still in the middle of reading it), it was a good reminder to see the matrix from the 7 habits of highly effective people.
i've also heard about the Derek Sivers’ mantra before (do something only if it's "Hell Yeah", or don't do it all), but this one doesn't work for me. I'd literally not do 99% of the things i'm doing if i lived by it haha
I find using a pomodoro timer is super helpful. Just force yourself to stand up and clear your thoughts every 30 minutes is very helpful. Sometimes I meditate during the short breaks, other times I read an article.
never heard of it but will check it out!
I would say it's a combination of things and experiments that led to a routine that really does 10x productivity:
.. By this time you're so pumped up to get started working that it's almost as if you've done some of the work already
I agree with Dmitry and BlueLobster - saying No, especially to toxic people, is critical. So is learning to delegate. You can 3x your task list by taking 1 hour to delegate a task to others, things like creating a piece of content, graphics, etc. or whatever is outside of your core competency. Routine in general, mixed in with health - sleep, meditation, exercise, nutrition (I also gave up beer recently ... sadly... and excess sugar to relieve some brain fog and it really helps), and being intentional, have worked great in combination for me.
And, if you ever get out of routine - get back on the horse asap or it's that much harder to get started again.
I feel truly 10x while I'm fasting. I should do it more often though. I think once a week for 24hours is ideal.
Using a task list app ( Todoist in my case ) to break my tasks into really small tasks and them prioritizing them, knowing clearly what to really helps me!
For me, it would be breaking large goals into smaller goals and daily processes. I can't stress how much this has helped me.
Big lofty goals are scary. I handle them by turning it into things I can do every day and focus on that.
If you want to grow website visits to 50k a month by December. Your goal will turn into creating 20 in-depth blog posts. Interviewing 10 influencers.
Then you can break these into even smaller goals like 2 in-depth blog posts a week and 1 influencer interview a week.
Then you turn small goals into daily tasks. Creating an outline, reach out to influencers etc.
So now you have a large goal, sub-goals and daily tasks.
I can't explain how powerful this is. It doesn't let you hide behind excuses or procrastinate because you know what you're supposed to do every day to get to your goal.
Probably has to be creating a list of tasks that I want to do on any given particular day and ticking off the ones I managed to do right before going to bed.I'm told meditation also helps, yet to try it though!
I remember the simple routine I had back at the Univerisity.
Wake up at 6AM.
Don't check email, twitter, anything at all. Just get the book, a pencil, and a paper and start studying.
Study until 11AM.
Go to lunch.
By noon I've already done deep study/work for 4 hours and it gives me more motivation to put several more hours in the afternoon.
It can be applied to any work needed to be done.
From 9 am to 1pm I usually don't do meetings, calls etc. If possible I only do this in the afternoon. And use mornings to get my stuff done...
Additionally I usually add time slots for my to do's in my calendar. The time is calculated a bit more generous and if I finish stuff early I use the "free time" for things I love but are not a 100% necessary...
Obviously this does not work everyday, but when I follow this routine I am crazy productive while having fun...
Probably not for everyone :)
Started using Workflowy/Dynalist for my business. Wrote down all the to-do's and ideas. Spent time to structure it. The AARRR (pirate metrics) framework is great for that! Once that's dumped out in excruciating detail and decently structured, create a "currently doing" short list that links to very specific items from the brain dump that you can accomplish easily. The idea is to be able to constantly update the "currently doing" list every day or two so that you see and feel the progress!
Listen to podcasts from Tim Ferriss, IndieHackers, MicroConf and so on. Hearing these people makes me want to get to work and kick ass too! Pow!
Batch preparing foods that are either heavy in vegetables or are good sources of monounsaturated fats. Not necessarily the biggest source of calories in my overall diet, but it basically forces everything else in my diet to be healthy.
Multiple things this year...
Gym Mon/Wed/Fri has made me focus on health which has brought other benefits.
Tracking my habits has been another important one as I now do all my housework straight after dinner which has given me 3 solid hours of my time before bed time at 12:30.
Also, nowadays most days i'm in bed by 12:30. That has definitely made a nice difference.