Immutable Truth: Less is More

It’s inspired by The Productivity Project by Chris Bailey. You can get more detail from his book or this note. This is a really good book and gives many useful hands-on experience. Instead of overtime work, we should think a better way to let your focus on most important thing at right time.

Less is More

• Achieve 3 outcomes for the day
• To get more done in less time, schedule less time to do something
• Taking a break for higher productivity

The Zen of Productivity

Productivity Isn’t About How Much You Produce, It’s About How Much You Accomplish. Furthermore, productivity is the product of how you manage your time, attention and energy everyday. In other hand, working 90 hour a week¹only makes you exhausted and less productive.

Cliché: The Three Most Effective Tips Are Also the Most Boring²

• Eating well
• Getting enough sleep
• Exercising

Forming Good Habits Makes You More Productive Automatically

Lead and succeed with projects done the Agile way

It seems to me that what the way Chris run with his project is similar to Agile software development with Scrum. You have hundreds open tasks in backlog and each day you active small scope of them in sprint.

Human Mind for Thinking, Storage Tasks on Backlog

• Shake off unattended tasks on your mind to help you get rid of feeling of not achieving things.
• The simple (but powerful) 15-minute ‘mind capture’ ritual
• The higher you Go, the farther you see. Prioritize what’s really important to you.

The Rule of 3³ within Sprint

• Rather than get overwhelmed by your tasks, you bite off 3 things you can accomplish only.

Mr. Procrastine, We’re Unstoppable!!!

“Emmett’s Law: The dread of doing a job uses up more time and energy than doing the job itself.” said by Rita Emmett.

Tip: Group all of your “maintenance tasks” together on one day to be (and feel) more productive.

The successful warrior is the average man, with laser focus. - Bruce Lee

• Schedule your most important, highest-leverage activities when you have the most energy
  
• Attention hijackers!⁴ Please flip your phone into airplane mode to have your quality time.
  

Take Breaks – even from Productivity

• Breaks let you step back from your work, recharge, come up with better ideas, slow down, reflect on your work, and ultimately make you a lot more productive.
• Happiness Drives Productivity
  • People matter, perhaps a lot more than you think. Living in reclusion doesn’t really help your productivity. You will try harder to became better person when you’re surrounded by people you love.
  • If you think something to yourself that would lose you a friend if you said it to them, question why you’re saying it to yourself.

---

1. 10 huge productivity lessons I learned working 90-hour weeks last month: You feel more productive when you check your email 10 times an hour instead of writing a report, because you receive more feedback from what you’re working on. Working long hours has been shown to make you no more productive than working 40-hour weeks in the long-term. ↩︎
   
2. I think that behind every cliché is a truth that’s so powerful that people feel compelled to repeat the phrase over and over and over. This holds true for productivity advice, as well. ↩︎
   
3. The Rule of 3 Explained ↩︎
   
4. Strategic airplane mode: And every day, between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m., I flip my phone into airplane mode, so I can recharge and disconnect before I fall asleep and after I wake up. Most nights I look forward to the ritual, because it always leaves me feeling refreshed. People can usually tell when you’re not only spending quality time with them, but quality attention as well. ↩︎