Selective Productivity: My Methodical Approach to Mastering Efficiency Hacks

I will never accomplish everything I want to get done before I die. I’ve had to come to terms with that reality, but I’m not happy with it. That doesn’t mean I don’t intend to try, though. The problem is that there are only that same 24 hours in a day that there ever have been, and a significant number of those hours are taken up with that J-O-B thing I keep having to go to. I love my job, I enjoy its challenges and the feelings of accomplishment I get in learning something new in a job I got but wasn’t qualified for, and the guy who hired me knew that I wasn’t qualified for it. I’ve learned an awful lot since then, and there are aspects of the job that I’m the only one on my team that is qualified to handle, and the reason I’ve made that kind of progress is because I’m extremely well-organized and highly productive. I make good use of a lot of tools in both my work and my personal life, and if I’m going to have to keep spending a lot of my day in that J-O-B, I need to also be really productive and organized in my off-work hours, that little space of time between job and sleep, and between sleep and job. There’s also a cruel tantalization that, when the kids are gone, you have all this spare time. That’s not true for polymaths (probably a subject for another post), because we can always find something else that we want to do. Day job, housekeeping (little that I do of it), side hustle, church activities – if I’m going to do it all, I have to find a way to optimize every minute.

As a result of what I described in that opening paragraph, I’ve become kind of a sucker for productivity hacks and tools. I’m willing to give anything a look, and if I don’t have to pay for it upfront, I’ll give it a try.  Beginning with lists and focusing only on the top five items, which I heard about from a series of cassettes by Earl Nightingale (yeah, that’s how long I’ve been at this), on through that method for prioritizing a long list of items that I wrote about, on to a very complicated system that only I can fully understand and only because I’ve never had to explain it – it’s been a pretty convoluted journey. It’s really wonderful, though, that there are people who develop tools and share methods, because I haven’t done any of this on my own. I’m going to give you a run-down on how I keep track of everything I’m doing and everything I hope I can do.

Evaluating New Productivity Hacks

If you’re not deeply entrenched in your methodology, implementing a new system or trying a new hack is actually pretty easy. When I look at a system, though, I have to consider whether it does something that my current system doesn’t do, or doesn’t do very well. Whatever it does that my current system is lacking, is it something I even need? Will it fill a gap that needs filled, or will it just be filler that I need to keep up with that doesn’t provide a benefit that creates value for me? There are a lot of cool tools that do things that I don’t need, because that aspect isn’t part of my life. It’s perfectly fine that not every tool was built for me, there are enough of us in the world that every tool will find its audience.

I also have to consider if the new hack or system can slipstream easily into my life, or will I need to make a lot of adjustments? Is it something I have to do a nuke-and-pave, rip-and-replace on, or just minor adjustments? Neither approach is right or wrong, and I’ve done both. However, once you’ve done a nuke-and-pave/rip-and-replace, you’re going to want to make sure everything new fits into that system.

That’s the rest of the picture for me – it’s really all about systems: habits, routines, lists, calendars, they’re all part of my system. When I work my system, my system works for me. When I neglect my system, I can feel it pretty quickly. I start feeling overwhelmed because all I can see is the backlog of things that need done, mail piling up, and the early stages of anxiety. All it usually takes is getting back into my system to put away the anxiety. By this stage in my systems, I’m implementing very few new tools very seldom, and only for small things, but I’ll still try a new hack if it looks like it could provide value I’m missing.

Tools I Use for Productivity

THE. MOST. IMPORTANT. TOOL. I. HAVE. FOR. PRODUCTIVITY. Is my calendar. I use Google calendar, because of the certain features. Each of these features integrates with the Apple calendar, and Outlook can do it for some things, but the Outlook-Google integration is one-way, which means that Outlook can accept things I put on my Google calendar, but things I put on my Outlook calendar won’t show up automatically on my Google calendar. That’s not useful, so I just use the Google calendar. I do miss a certain feature from the Apple calendar, though, and that’s the ability to “slide” the week so it’s maybe Wednesday through Tuesday, instead of always being Sunday through Saturday. I can sent the default week to start on any day I want, but that’s for the whole calendar, and I have to advance week by week. If I want to just drag an event from Saturday to Sunday, that’s easy to do on the Apple calendar, but not on the Google calendar. It is what it is, and it’s working as well as I need it to.

Different calendars, with different colors, for different aspects of my life. Let me warn you, this is going to look a bit overwhelming, but it really isn’t, and I’ll explain why.

What you’re looking at is one typical week. This method has evolved over time to accommodate my current life. It started with just the purpley-blue color that you see across the top. Those events are “regular” items. My daily desk exercises, meteor showers, lunch reminder, grocery shopping reminder, yes, I need reminders for those things, but mostly as a time-holder so I don’t put something else over that time frame. Events in the red-red are church events, the Kelly green is work meetings, the lime green items are imported from Nozbe, royal blue is personal development, chocolate brown is family events, purple is web meetings for my art business, and the orange is my editorial calendar. The top of the calendar is “all day” things, or things that have to happen at some point during that day. I also subscribe to team calendars for three Major Leage Baseball teams (Cleveland Guardians, New York Yankees, and Atlanta Braves) and four college football teams (Alabama Crimson Tide, Auburn Tigers – our two “local” teams, Ohio State Buckeyes, where I grew up, and Purdue Boilermakers, my Alma Mater).

Now, knowing that, you can see that the team calendars aren’t things I have to do; they’re just notifications for when “my” teams are playing so I can drop in when I want to. Same with the art business web meetings and editorial writing sessions – if I’m free when they’re happening, I can drop into them. I can also turn calendars on and off so I don’t see anything but what I want to see, but I’ve kind of trained myself so that I can tell at a glance during the work day that the desk exercises and work meetings are pretty much the only things that catch my attention, unless there’s a doctor’s appointment that shows up in that chocolate brown.

I can customize frequency of events. Some things are one-time events, some things happen every day, some things happen once a week, some things happen the second Saturday of every month – and fortunately, Google calendar can accommodate almost all of the various frequencies. It doesn’t let me save an instance two different times on the same day, or at different times on different days, those each have to have their own calendar entries. But, for the most part, it’s been really easy to pull things together.

I can view my calendar by day, week, month. The week view is the one I use most, and the month view is useless for me. I need the week overview more than I need the daily view, and the monthly view just shows a bunch of colors. Yes, I have something scheduled every day of every month for the rest of my life, there’s no such thing as an unscheduled day for me.

My calendar integrates with Nozbe, the second most important tool I have, and, as I said, those items that have dates attached to them show up on that date in my calendar in that lime green color. Not my favorite color, but there are only so many distinct colors available, and I have to use colors that show up distinctly on my iPhone as well as in Google Calendar. I don’t use the Google Calendar iPhone app because the notifications were annoying, even though it shows the sports calendars, which the iPhone doesn’t. I can live with that limitation.

Google calendar allows me to type additional notes and add attachments to events. I have the option to make those notes available to all repeating events or to only that event if I choose.  One way I use this is if I have an event scheduled to watch a webinar, the link to the webinar is included in the event. Attachments are a little different, and they don’t always show up well, but I rarely use them – it’s enough to know that I can if I need to.

Second in importance for tools is Nozbe, but I need to talk about something else first, and that’s the Getting Things Done methodology. Getting Things Done is a book written by David Allen, and I highly recommend reading it and putting the methodology into action, but here’s a warning: it’s difficult to get started, because it calls for gathering everything out of place and going through each item. That can be really hard to look at because you’re going to be looking at a mountain of items, and you really can’t move forward without doing that first. But, organizing your thoughts into projects and capturing things has immense value. I absolutely don’t try to remember anything anymore, unless it’s a skill I want to build, but that’s less “remembering” and more “learning” or “creating muscle memory.” I don’t remember dates. I don’t remember appointments. I don’t remember what you wanted me to get for you at the store. That’s what my calendar and shopping list are for. If you want me to know something and act on it, don’t speak it verbally to me unless I have a way to record it for action.

Now – Nozbe. Nozbe is the perfect program for implementing the Getting Things Done methodology. You can organize things into projects, but you capture them into your Inbox. You set time aside to go through the Inbox and either act on stuff, file it, or pass it to a project. The idea is to not carry stuff around in your head that you aren’t acting on right now. Your brain shouldn’t be used for that, it should be used for acting on stuff. You may have heard of “second brain” as a way to be more productive, well, that’s kind of what I’ve got going with my calendar and Nozbe. If I add a date to a task in a project (I also have a “project” of things that are single actions, so I can get them on my calendar if they need an action by a certain date), Nozbe puts it on its own calendar and integrates with my Google calendar. As I mark it completed in Nozbe, Nozbe moves it to the bottom of the day’s list and grays it out. I can unmark it if I marked it by mistake. I can mark a project “complete” when all the tasks are done. I number my projects, and each task within the project starts with that project number, so that when they show up in my calendar, I can see which projects are on my calendar. Some are more important than others, and some are just “the next action” that need to be on my radar but aren’t particularly the most important thing to work on. Nozbe is not free to use, but you can try it out. Its cost is minimal and well worth it to me for what it allows me to keep track of.

What Else Do I Use?

I’m kind of playing with the free version of Notion, which was pretty cool when we were using it to plan a trip for the whole family that we ended up not taking. I was able to share the notebook and others were able to add activities to it. Right now I’m using it to hold blog post ideas, but I know I’m not getting its full value because it overlaps so many of my other tools. There’s another one called Obsidian that I think offers similar functionality, and I’ve looked into Trello, but I didn’t find enough new and wonderful in either of them to move from what I’m doing now.

I’ve used Quicken for years, and I’m experimenting with Monarch because Mint is being sunsetted. I’m not sure how long I’ll keep Monarch, because Quicken is doing what I need it to do, but Monarch came so highly recommended for people who needed something to move to after Mint shut down. Quicken isn’t free, either, and neither is Monarch, but the annual cost was worth it to give it a try. I’ll probably let it expire after the first year, because I can pull everything into Quicken without having to scroll sheet by sheet to see it all.

When I’m watching a video I need to talk about later, I keep Notepad open and I just type my notes into it. I can synthesize them later if I have to. Every operating system has some form of a notepad, even phones and tablets, but using a notepad on a mobile device while I’m watching a video is nearly impossible, so I really only do that on my laptop. I’ve tried to implement routines and schedules, and they work well for productivity as long as I use them. It’s easy to get lazy, though, and abandon the routine “just this one time”. I try to make good use of passenger time, going through emails, writing, catching up on reading, and my drive time is good for podcasts and audiobooks. I keep discovering good podcasts, so I may never get all the way through my backlog of podcasts. One thing that I was skeptical of until I tried it was cooler showers. Not all the way through – I’m never going to do that. What I do is wait till the only thing left is rinsing the conditioner out of my hair, then I turn the water temp down so it’s significantly cooler than normal for me, not cold, but cool enough to be uncomfortable. This really wakes my brain up and gets me ready to work. Our bodies and minds work best when we subject them to a bit of discomfort fairly regularly, and this one is pretty easy to implement. It’s really only uncomfortable for a few seconds, then I get used to it and it’s fine for the next couple of minutes.

I still use Evernote to capture web pages that don’t warrant a bookmark, and to organize some other information, but the new owners keep limiting its capabilities to higher and higher tiers, so I’m probably going to be looking to offload a lot of that information to other tools in the near future.

The Importance of Rest

People who tell you how they got a business up and running will tell you that you just have to put the work in, and if that means long nights as well as long days, you do it. Then, a few minutes later, they’ll tell you that you have to get enough rest. You can’t both burn the candle at both ends and get enough rest, it’s just impossible. So which one do I set as the default condition? Rest. Unless there’s something that absolutely, positively must be done by a very short deadline, I fall on the side of resting enough. An occasional long-nighter is fine, but it isn’t sustainable as a constant practice. My body and brain work best earlier in the day, so I try to rise very early (4:00 or 4:30), because by the time I finish work at 3:30 in the afternoon, I’m going to be limited on what I’m going to be able to do mentally. By the time we’re done with dinner, all I’m good for is watching reruns of videos for a couple of hours. Know when you work best and shift your priority items to that time period. And Rest.

It’s also critical to take breaks during your long periods of activity. Looking at my calendar, you’ll see long blocks of Kelly green, meaning one work meeting right after another. Sometimes I’ll log into a meeting, and let the organizer know I just came out of another meeting, that I need a “bio break.” I can’t take 15 minutes, but walking to the restroom, going to the kitchen to refill my water bottle, stretching, and walking back to the study can provide a much-needed respite. I’m refreshed and ready to pay attention to the meeting.

YOUR TURN

We’re all different, we each have our favorite tools. This is just the list of stuff that works for me, and it will change again over time before I die or get too senile to care. I’d love to hear from you, is there a tool you love that I’m not using? What do you love about it? If you want more information on something I use, let me know by dropping it into the comments.

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Playlist for this writing session:

Since You’re Gone – The Cars; Child of the Wild Blue Yonder – John Hiatt; After the Flood – Lone Justice; Tonight Tonight – Hot Chelle Rae; I’m the Slime – Frank Zappa; East of Eden – Lone Justice; Kryptonite – 3 Doors Down; Banditos – The Refreshments; Lipstick Sunset – John Hiatt; Cleveland Rocks – The Presidents of the United States of America; Waterfall – Electric Light Orchestra; With Arms Wide Open – Creed; Save Tonight – Eagle Eye Cherry; Badlands – Bruce Springsteen; Mud – North Mississippi Allstars; Feels Like Rain – John Hiatt; Without Love – Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes; Call Me – Blondie; You Can Do It – No Doubt; You Never Even Called Me By My Name – David Allan Coe; I Wish You Were Here – Simple Minds; You Mean So Much to Me – Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes with Ronnie Spector; Stand Alone – Telluride; Atomic – Blondie; Excuse Me Mr. – No Doubt; Hurricane Season – Billy Pilgrim; One Week – Bare Naked Ladies; So Into You – Atlanta Rhythm Section; Don’t Do Me Like That – Tom Petty; Wake Me Up – Avicii; Fun, Fun, Fun – The Beach Boys; Surfer Girl – The Beach Boys; In City Dreams – Robin Trower; Shake ‘Em On Down – North Mississippi Allstars; Vanity Kills – ABC; Have a Little Faith – John Hiatt