Preface of the translator : There are so many books written in the world on personal efficiency and time management that, while taking on this translation, I certainly asked myself the question: “Is there anything new here, why should this article be translated, and most importantly read?” At first it seemed to me that I answered this question “yes,” but the reality turned out to be somewhat more complicated.  

Now I think that it is almost impossible to say something new to a person who has read at least 2-3 books on time management and personal effectiveness. However, there is a huge gap between what people know and what people do . Therefore, if you already have some knowledge of personal effectiveness, I suggest instead of asking the question “is it something that I don’t know?” To ask other questions:

1. Do I agree with the written?
2. If so, am I doing this?
3. If not, why and what can I do to start doing the right thing?  
')
I am sure, so the article will bring you much more benefit.

I have to say that I enjoyed following the links in this article, especially for those that describe Chris's experiments (such as switching between the 90-hour and 20-hour work weeks). Therefore, I decided to keep all these links in the translated article.

I would also like to make a comment for lovers of beautiful Russian language. For a long time I thought about changing “productivity” to “productivity” and “personal effectiveness” closer to my native ear, but in the end I decided to leave everything as it is - mainly because of the impossibility of using the same word in different contexts.

As a last wish, this is a rather long article, so read productively: do not switch between tasks in the process of reading; take breaks if you feel fatigue and loss of concentration; Record useful thoughts without relying on memory.

Enjoy reading!

10 main conclusions that I made during the Year of Productivity Studies

After I graduated from university in business last May, I received two excellent job offers, which I rejected because I had a plan.

Exactly one year from May 1, 2013 to May 1, 2014, I was going to absorb all the information about productivity I can reach and write every day about what I learned in the blog A Year of Productivity .

Over the past 12 months, I have conducted many productivity experiments on myself, interviewed the most productive people in the world, and read tons of popular science and academic productivity literature — all in order to explore how I can become as productive as possible. and then write about your findings.

After one year, 197 records and a million views, I reached the end of my journey - only a bright end was left.

As the end of the year's productivity, I gathered a collection of the main things I discovered, trying to become as productive as possible. Below you will find 10 main conclusions that I made during my project; I also wrote an article about my 100 favorite hacks of time, energy, and attention that I experimented with this year.

Without further discussion, here are my 10 main conclusions that I have made over the past year.

10. One of the best ways to be productive is to work on the most high-performance tasks.

In each of the main areas of your life (such as mind, body, emotions, relationships, career, finances and pleasure) there are only a few tasks that bring maximum benefit. For example, in your work most likely there are only a few tasks that bring 80-90% of the benefit, no matter who you work for.

One of the best ways to do more is to define high-performance tasks in each of the areas of your life and focus on them , so these things do the most for your time, energy and attention.

9. The three most effective ways to become more productive are the boring tips you've heard a million times.

I think that behind every cliché lies such a powerful truth that people feel the need to repeat it again and again. This is also true for productivity tips.

For a year I experimented with the integration of a huge number of habits and efficiency techniques into my life, but in the end I can say that the three things that worked best for me are:

1. Proper nutrition

2. Good sleep

3. Exercise

These tips are repeated so often that they almost ceased to be perceived. But hear me as a person who has tried hundreds of time, energy and attention management techniques in the past decade: nothing has made me more productive than the right food, enough sleep and exercise ¹ .

8. Question all productivity recommendations.

There are productivity techniques that work equally well for everyone — including proper nutrition, good sleep, exercise, and meditation — however, every rule has exceptions.

You can reject the conventional wisdom if there is something that works for you better. Found that you work better when you do not need to wake up at 5.30 in the morning? Then sleep more! Do you think that you have more time, not when you do the most important thing in the morning, but when you respond to a pack of e-mails? Then reply to e-mails!

In any productivity technique, there is usually a grain of truth, as well as in every common truth, but there are a lot of productivity techniques that simply won't work for you. Each person has his own way of thinking and his own priorities, therefore there is no technician who would work perfectly 100% of the time for 100% of people.

Therefore, you can (and should) reject any productivity advice if something works for you better.

7. Forming the right habits automatically increases your efficiency.

I believe that one of the ways to become more effective is to turn new, more effective behaviors into habits in order to fulfill them automatically.

Charles Dahigg, author of The Power of Habits , estimates that 40-45% of what we do daily is automatic habits. Habit formation is not an easy task, sometimes it takes several months to integrate a new habit into your life, but as soon as a new behavior becomes a habit, you automatically move to the next level of productivity.

For example, forming the habit of waking up at 5:30 every morning took me several months, but after it happened, it became a corner habit and I started to wake up every morning automatically. I spent a few weeks to switch to a new diet , but after I did it, this habit became one of the many automatic habits in my life.

If you want to learn how to integrate new habits into your life, read my interview with Charles . The formation of new habits is not easy, especially when you have to expend willpower to force yourself to change your behavior, but the more you move, the easier it becomes, and finally you start to act more productively automatically.

6. There are three productivity ingredients that you combine: time, energy and attention

Toward the end of the project, I realized that any of the articles I wrote falls into one or more of three categories: how to better manage your time , how to better manage your energy, and how better to manage your attention .

I think all three ingredients are critical if you want to achieve regular productivity. Some people have tremendous reserves of energy and concentration, but they do not know how to manage their time, so they don’t work on those things, and they don’t achieve much in the end. Some people are good at managing their time and they have a lot of energy, but they are constantly distracted and therefore cannot reach their goals. Others focus perfectly and know how to manage their time, but they do not manage their energy very well, so they get tired quickly and cannot achieve much.

Productive people know how to manage all three components.

Interlude. 10 productivity experiments that I spent over a year studying productivity

1. 35 hours of meditation for 7 days .

2. 70 hours of viewing videos on TED for 7 days .

3. Meals only with soylent during the week .

4. Living in complete isolation for 10 days .

5. 90-hour work weeks .

6. Switch between formal wear, business casual and pajamas for 21 days .

7. Be a complete slob during the week .

8. Use your smartphone an hour a day for three months .

9. Drink only water for a month .

10. Day siesta for 3 hours .

5. There is no single secret of productivity, but there are hundreds of tactics that you can use to achieve this.

If the secret of productivity exists, then I could not find it after a year of studying productivity and experimenting with it.

What I managed to find was hundreds of tactics that I could use to better manage my time, energy, and attention. In fact, I found so many tactics that I wrote a list of 100 of my favorite tactics when I finished this year.

Productivity is a very global concept, characterized by an understanding of its individual interrelated parts. There are hundreds (if not thousands) of factors that influence how much you can do in a day, each of which is associated with the ability to manage your time, energy and attention.

There is no secret to becoming more productive - there are hundreds .

4. Too hard work worsens your productivity.

In the course of my project, I found that too hard work or too much work completely degraded my productivity.

As an experiment in productivity, I alternated 90-hour working weeks and 20-hour working hours during the month. I found that in the 20-hour week I did about the same as on the 90-hour. The reason is simple: when I limited the amount of time I could spend on a task, I forced myself to devote more energy for a shorter period of time, so I was able to make the task faster .

What happens when you work too hard and spend too much energy on a task? You are fading. (Interestingly, I did not find any side effects when using increased attention, however, I found that levels of attention and energy very often increase and fall synchronously). I think of energy as the fuel that a person burns during the day in order to do work. When you spend more energy at work and don’t take the time to recover and improve your energy — in ways such as exercise , work breaks , proper nutrition, or investing in effective stress reduction strategies — your fuel will run out and you will burn out.

Too long or too hard work completely destroys your productivity, because it drains your two most important resources: your time and your energy.

3. The best way to feel motivated is to know why you want to do something.

The most motivated (and productive) people are those who constantly ask themselves why they do what they do.

When you concentrate on doing more, instead of doing what is consonant with your goals and what you believe in, you can force yourself to be productive in the short term, but in the long term you will be less satisfied and productive. The key is to determine your values ​​and what motivates you the most, and then take on the tasks and responsibilities that most closely match your values.

The fact that you are constantly busy and produce a lot does not mean that your productivity is high, in fact, I am ready to say that everything is exactly the opposite. Productivity is not how much you do, it is whether you achieve the results that are most important to you.

If you always know why you are doing something, you will be much more motivated and productive.

2. It makes no sense to try to become more productive if you do not have a good attitude towards yourself.

The reason why I write so much about taking care of myself is that this part of my productivity is the most difficult thing for me.

When I first started A Year of Productivity, I plunged into this project, because nothing fascinates me more than the opportunity to become more productive. At first, everything was simple, and I liked it; I did not have to overstrain, so I had no problems with the performance of work.

But the project grew, and thousands of visits to the site per month turned into hundreds of thousands of visits, and I began to force myself to put more effort into writing, experimenting and doing. As a result, I began to receive much less pleasure.

This fact is quite difficult to recognize, especially considering how many people would like to be in my position - to explore a favorite topic and achieve success in this. But this only proves how important it is to take care of yourself in the process.

Increased productivity does not come without effort - you need to work on yourself to become better; but it’s important not to start berating yourself while trying to bring positive changes to your life.

You need to constantly monitor how kind you are to yourself, trying to force yourself to do something. Considering that, according to statistics, 80% of what we think about ourselves is negative , it is critically important to treat yourself kindly as often as possible, especially when you are trying to become better.

Some tactics that helped me to become better this year are meditation , more breaks in work , completely disconnected from work several times a day, and developing habits that increase the level of happiness .

1. Productivity is not how much you produce, but how much you achieve

When I started my year of productivity, I created a statistics page to accurately reflect how productive I was every day. Every day I wrote down the number of words I wrote, the pages I read, and the hours I worked, because it seemed to me to be quite good indicators of how effective I was.

It was difficult to make a mistake more.

If you are not a factory director, a productivity measurement based on the number of units produced gives you an extremely shallow, limited picture of your productivity. For example, if you find a smart and creative approach to solving a problem — for example, you can rewrite the text so as to turn 500 words into 100 — a simple measurement of the number of units produced will show that you have become much less productive.

It’s pretty easy to fall into the trap of measurement and statistics, but where it’s about personal productivity, statistics are secondary. Productivity is not how much you do, but what you achieve.

Of course, you need to do highly effective and meaningful tasks; it is also important to know how to manage time, energy and attention in order to have more resources to work. But in the end, when time, energy and attention end, you have only what you managed to achieve, and the changes you managed to make in this world, thanks to the fact that you have lived the day of your life with benefit.

This is productivity.



¹ I also wanted to include meditation in this list, but I quickly realized that this practice is not as accessible to most people as the right food, more sleep and exercise.