The Productivity Project: Accomplishing More by Managing Your Time, Attention, and Energy

by Chris Bailey

productivity tactics—like the ones that I discuss in this book—exist to help you accomplish everything you have to do in less time, so you can carve out more time for what’s actually important and meaningful in your life.

Meditation had such a profound effect on my productivity because it allowed me to slow down enough so that I could work deliberately and not on autopilot

productivity has nothing to do with how much you do, and everything to do with how much you accomplish.

The most productive people work at a pace somewhere between the monk and the stock trader—fast enough to get everything done, and slowly enough so they can identify what’s important and then work deliberately and with intention.

Productivity is about how much you accomplish.

Perhaps most important, if you can’t manage all three—time, attention, energy—well, it is next to impossible to work deliberately and with intention throughout the day.

there is absolutely no difference in socioeconomic standing between someone who is an early riser and someone who is a night owl—we

not all tasks are created equal. Put another way, there are certain tasks in your work that, minute for minute, lead you to accomplish more.

common sense isn’t always common action. Just because you know something to be true, doesn’t mean you’ll act on it—even

Productivity isn’t about doing more things—it’s about doing the right things.

At the beginning of every day, mentally fast-forward to the end of the day, and ask yourself: When the day is over, what three things will I want to have accomplished? Write those three things down. 2. Do the same at the beginning of every week.

personality aside, the more aversive (unattractive) a task or project is to you, the more likely you are to put it off. And there are six main task attributes that make procrastination more likely. Those are whether a task is one or more of the following: • Boring • Frustrating • Difficult • Unstructured or ambiguous • Lacking in personal meaning • Lacking in intrinsic rewards (i.e., it’s not fun or engaging)

the more you see yourself like a stranger, the more likely you are to give your future self the same workload that you would give a stranger, and the more likely you are to put things off to tomorrow—for your future self to do.

when we schedule time for something, what we’re actually doing is simply deciding when we will invest our attention and energy into the task.

the simple act of making a to-do list makes you less likely to get work done, because creating a task list simulates getting actual work done, even though it doesn’t lead you to accomplish anything.

During my productivity project, I discovered something interesting about the different techniques that are supposed to help you organize or take control of your life: most of them aren’t worth your time.

Your hot spots are the portfolio of your life. From a very high level, all your tasks, projects, and commitments can be categorized into one of seven basic “hot spots,”

What do I need to spend more time on next week? • What did I spend too much time on last week? • What do I need to schedule or do next week? • What do I have to be mindful of next week? • What are some unresolved issues I’m having in each area? • What opportunities do I have in each of my hot spots next week? • What obstacles will get in the way of my goals next week? • Am I going in the right direction with all my commitments? • Are there any commitments I need to add or remove? Expand or shrink? • What did I knock out of the park last week?

Out of all the methods I tried in my project, though, nothing worked quite as well as simply sitting in a room with a pen and a sheet of paper.

The less attention you devote to a task, the more time you have to spend to complete it, because you work less efficiently.

just keep a notepad by your desk and make a note of every distraction or interruption that pops up and tempts you to interrupt what you are working on. Then get back to work. And if you need to, deal with the would-be interruptions after.

Productivity isn’t about doing more, faster—it’s about doing the right things, deliberately and with intention.

according to Basex, “Interruptions and the requisite recovery time now consume 28 percent of a worker’s day.”

Multitasking even makes you more prone to experiencing boredom, anxiety, and depression.

When on a conference call, try not to check for email or messages, and simply focus on bringing as much attention and value to the call as possible.

If you can’t stop thinking of other things, question why you agreed to be on the call in the first place.

Mindfulness is important because we value things differently in the moment than we do in the long term, and mindfulness gives us the attentional space we need to switch off autopilot and make more productive decisions in the moment.

“Before a conversation, before a meeting, before an encounter of any kind, step back, and see if you can check in with yourself to see what your intention is. What do you most want to see come out of a conversation? Then work toward that, instead of getting caught up in what you’re feeling.”

Every night, even after the toughest days, I write down the three biggest things I’m grateful for from that day, or if that’s too hard, three things I’m grateful for in general.

One psychologist, Shad Helmstetter, has found that “seventy-seven percent of everything we think is negative, counterproductive, and works against us.”

deeper office friendships boost your job satisfaction by about 50 percent, and that you are seven times as likely to be highly engaged at work when your best friend works at the same place.

Quick productivity hacks are sexy, but they’re the fad diets of the workplace.