Passive productivity: Getting more done, by default

So I was reading about passive income.

Set it up once, after which money comes in with minimal to no effort.

“What else works this way?”

Let's use the term “passive productivity”: ongoing productivity gains that take little to no effort to maintain.

As opposed to “active productivity”, which requires constant effort, passive productivity is a system you set up or a skill you develop once, after which it will benefit you for eternity. Time blocking and daily agendas are only useful when you actively follow them.

I wrote an article exploring different ways to be more productive passively. In this post, I'll summarize the main ideas.

Skills that lead to passive productivity

Typing faster

Typing faster is one of the purest forms of passive productivity. Once you’ve developed the skill, you don’t need to dedicate any time to maintaining it: you reinforce the skill whenever you’re typing, which most of us do daily.

Taking some 20-40 hours to improve your typing will set you back in the short term, but will make you passively more productive for the rest of your life (more than enough to compensate for the training period).

To quantify the productivity gains here, all you need to consider are two factors:

1. Your typing speed (average is around 40 words per minute, WPM). You can test yours online.
2. How many words you type each day

It’s very realistic to reach 80 WPM, an intermediate level, with maybe 20 hours of conscious practice. So that could already double your productivity with all things text.

If you write 900 words a day (a modest amount if you take all typing into account), that doubling could translate to a 10-minute saving, every day. It may not sound like much, but it compounds every single day for the rest of your working life. And obviously, the more you write, or the more your speed improves, the more time you gain back.

So find a free typing website and follow their learning plan. I’ve personally used Typing.com but there are many others.

Speed reading

Like typing, reading is something we do every day. A small improvement is likely to become your new default, making you passively more productive for eternity.

Speed reading won’t give you the power to glance at a page and recall it perfectly, but it can give you some “beginner gains” quite realistically if you’ve never practiced it.

We probably read a few thousand words a day, and with an average reading speed of about 200 words a minute, even mild increases can save you minutes every day (= entire working days in a year, for the rest of your life).

And I’m an optimist: if we can realistically double or even triple our typing speed, why couldn’t we do something comparable to our reading speed with deliberate practice?

Here’s what I’m trying to improve:

• Consciously speed my reading up when I realize I fall back to the lazy default. Over time, my default has become faster.
• Compress the text into narrower lines, so my eyes have to travel less distance when switching from one line to another. Easy to do by making your browser window narrower.
• Occasionally, some tools like Spreeder

You’ll probably want to start practicing with non-critical, fluffy material where a slight decrease in comprehension won’t lead to negative consequences.

Using Google Search better

If you use a search engine often, it pays to take an hour to learn how to use it well.

For most, Google is one of those engines but you may be using Reddit, Twitter, some research websites… many things have a search function when you think about it.

I try to write for a living and one of the core questions I ask when researching a topic is this: “Would an average person find this information / example / concept easily?”

If they can get the same experience or value with a quick search, I’m producing a commodity. If they would really need to dig, I’m producing something rare and valuable.

So in my line of business, and in many others, using a search engine better than most is a competitive advantage.

Best yet, it doesn’t take long to learn. There are many guides online on search parameters and advanced tricks.

I personally use these often:

• “site:www.example.com” to include results from only that domain. Especially useful for Reddit.
• “-site:www.example.com” to exclude certain domains from the results. The likes of Pinterest have taken over so many keywords that this comes in handy weekly.

Keyboard shortcuts for anything you use frequently

There’s a joke: “How do you know someone sucks at Microsoft Excel?”
“They use the mouse.”

(And yes, the joke isn’t that funny - but what can you expect from people who use Excel)

Anyway, the truth is there: using the keyboard is faster than using the mouse.

The more frequently you use the tool, the more quickly a shortcut becomes second nature, and the bigger the benefit.

Email is probably the most natural tool to start with, followed by calendar, any project management or note-taking apps (Trello, Notion…) or specialized tools you use often like Docs, Sheets, Adobe software...

1. Nearly every tool meant for frequent use has shortcuts. Look them up.
2. Figure out the 1-3 most frequent actions you take with the tool and learn the shortcuts for those.
3. Once those shortcuts are second nature, take up 1-3 further shortcuts. Rinse and repeat until you can perform most actions via a shortcut.

And let’s not overlook the browser and desktop itself.

Browser: opening, closing and navigating between tabs, reopening a tab you just closed, selecting the navigation bar etc.

Desktop: opening programs from your taskbar, navigating between programs, touchpad gestures etc.

Look up the guides online.

I use Windows and my personal fav is Windows key + V to open up a clipboard of everything I’ve copied recently (but Windows key + Shift + S isn’t bad either).

How to identify further skills that lead to passive productivity

I’ve only included a few skills above - start with one or two, you can’t practice all of them at the same time effectively. Once you’re on the path, you’ll continue finding more skills to learn.

The main point is that these skills should lead to continual increases in productivity and they must be easy to maintain. Therefore, the easiest place to look is in your daily or weekly schedule: Is there something you do or use but have never explicitly learned? Chances are, you didn’t learn the most productive or efficient method.

Systems or tools leading to passive productivity

Max out your cursor speed

Let’s start with an easy, hacky one. Takes 10 minutes to get used to a fast cursor, shaves 1 second every time you use the mouse. (But I think the preservation of flow is more important)

Plus, your friends will think your mouse is on steroids.

Just search your computer for “Mouse settings” (or “Touchpad” if you use that) and set the cursor speed to max (yes, it feels too fast at first, but I promise, you’ll get used to it).

Automations, filters

The most efficient way to do something is not to do it at all.

Get it automated or get it filtered and it’s not on your to do list anymore.

Automations:

• Zapier automations to link tools together. If you do the same process often, you can automate it with Zapier in 10 minutes.
• Blocking apps or websites during your “focus hours”
• Home automations (if you’ve got gadgets) like morning and evening routines

Filters:

• Unsubscribe from most emails, filter newsletters to a distinct inbox
• Filter out all notifications not sent by a real person, and mute most remaining notifications until you’re ready to deal with them
• Limit the content you see on social media to limit the time you spend on social media

Main point: outsource as much to the robots as possible. Automations and filters allow you to make the decision once to avoid making it many times.
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Templates, checklists

If a certain action is required often, and you cannot automate or filter it fully, you should use templates or checklists.

Templates so you don’t need to start from scratch - improves speed.

Checklists so you cover everything - reduces errors.

Here are some example processes where I’m passively more productive because of templates and checklists:

• Editing a blog post => I follow a list and once everything’s ticked, I’m confident it’s my best work
• Sending emails / reports => Did you know you can create Gmail templates? Gets that weekly report out of the way in record time
• Working out => a checklist for warming up, sets, weights and cool down means I can focus on moving, not wondering how to move

What’s something you should templatize?

How to identify further systems that lead to passive productivity

You should look for things you do frequently. If you do it only once, there’s no real room for automation.

Unlike skills, systems don’t depreciate. You can forget a skill if you don’t reinforce it, but a system doesn’t need reinforcement.

So we can look at things you do monthly, annually or even bi-annually, apply systems, and create time savings over the long term.

The main “equation” you need to care about is this: Time saved by the system > time used to set up the system.

For example, you could spend 2 hours automating a task that saves you 10 minutes a week, therefore you’d become “time profitable” in 13 weeks (so it takes 13 weeks to earn back the time it took to set up your system).

Limitation: life happens. You may create a template for that massive annual review of yours, estimating you’ll become time profitable in 5 years. But then life happens and you discontinue creating those reviews.

I recommend you prioritize systems where you achieve time profitability the quickest.

Conclusion

Like vitamins won’t substitute a poor diet, passive productivity isn’t a substitute for the traditional productivity advice. It’ll make you faster, but the direction needs to be right first.

And on their own, these aren’t massive, radical improvements in your productivity. Why should we care about a few minutes here and there?

But if you learn a few skills, set up a few systems, you can free up days or even weeks, every single year. Your own holiday, earned through passive productivity.

Think of it as a salary increase: you negotiate it once, and all your future paydays are going to be bigger.

I hope this post introduced a perspective you may not have considered before. Now get out there and become more productive!

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Do you have any other examples of things that can make you more productive, by default? Or any comments on the idea? Would love to hear your thoughts.

Thanks,
Jaakko