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

by Chris Bailey

David Allen’s canonical Getting Things Done

To see the profound effects that investing in your productivity can have, look no further than to how the average American spends his or her day. According to the most recent American Time Use Survey, the average employed person aged twenty-five to fifty-four with kids spends: • 8.7 hours a day working • 7.7 hours a day sleeping • 1.1 hours a day on household chores • 1.0 hours a day eating and drinking • 1.3 hours a day caring for others • 1.7 hours a day on “Other” • 2.5 hours a day on leisure activities

Shortly after I graduated in May of 2013, I officially declined the two full-time job offers to start a project of my own that I named A Year of Productivity (or AYOP).

ayearofproductivity.com.

Identify the integral tasks in your work. • Work on those tasks more efficiently. • Manage your time like a ninja. • Quit procrastinating. • Work smarter, not harder. • Develop laserlike focus. • Achieve zenlike mental clarity throughout the day. • Have more energy than you have ever had before.

she ended the class with a simple breathing meditation, where she would guide us through mindfully observing our breath. Those meditation sessions were only five minutes long,

As I dove deeper and deeper into the ritual, I went from meditating five minutes a day, to ten minutes, to fifteen minutes, to twenty minutes, and eventually, a few years ago, to thirty minutes every day.

Basically, I simply sit on a chair or a cushion—usually in my work clothes—and observe my breath.

means). I simply focus on my breath for thirty minutes, and when my mind inevitably wanders away from my breath to focus on something more interesting, I gently bring my attention back to my breath. I continue to observe its natural ebbs and flows until my meditation timer rings after thirty minutes. It’s frustrating at times, but over time the ritual grew to easily be the most calming part of my day.

meditation and productivity were connected.

Instead of taking frequent breaks to step back from my project, I would work straight through my tiredness and fatigue to try to write and experiment as much as possible. As I began to work at a more hurried pace, I felt less calm and focused throughout the day. My head wasn’t as clear, and I became less excited by the work I was doing—even though I was exploring my deepest passion. Worst of all, I began to work less deliberately, and a lot more often on autopilot. Because of all this, I became much less productive

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.

After I stopped meditating every day, I began to work more frantically and less deliberately, which prevented me from working smarter. And that wiped out the productivity gains I had made.

work smarter instead of just harder.

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.

That requires you to work smarter instead and manage your time, attention, and energy better than ever before.

every lesson I learned fell into better management of one of three categories: my time, my attention, and my energy.

In this new environment, the most productive people not only manage their time well—they also manage their attention and energy well.

interconnected and important all three of the ingredients of productivity are.

getting enough sleep requires more time, but it boosts your energy and ability to manage your attention. Eliminating noise and distractions also takes time, but helps you manage your attention better because it provides you with more focus and clarity throughout the day. Changing your mindset takes energy and attention, but will let you get more done in less time.

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.

(Interestingly, the construct of “burnout” is relatively new; it was first identified in the 1970s—somewhere in the middle of our transition from a factory mindset to a productivity mindset in the workplace.)

determining the right things to become more productive on. Your effort toward taking control of your time, attention, and energy will be fruitless when you don’t first take stock of what tasks are the most valuable and meaningful to you.

the biggest lesson I learned was just how important it is to deeply care about why you want to become more productive.

perhaps the biggest lesson I learned from this experiment was just how important it is to deeply care about your productivity goals, about why you want to become more productive.

But making the jump between knowing and doing is what productivity is all about.

THE VALUES CHALLENGE Time required: 7 minutes Energy/Focus Required: 6/10 Value: 8/10 Fun: 3/10

When I started A Year of Productivity, I created a fancy landing page on my website that contained live-updating charts of exactly how many words I wrote, pages I read, and hours I worked each day (it’s still live at http://alifeofproductivity.com/statistics).

I think the best way to measure productivity is to ask yourself a very simple question at the end of every day: Did I get done what I intended to?

If at the beginning of the day you intend to write a thousand great words, and you do, you were productive. If you intend to finish a report at work, ace a job interview, and spend quality time with your family, and you do, again, you are perfectly productive. If you intend to relax for a day, and you have the most relaxing day you’ve had all year, you were perfectly productive.

Intention and deliberateness are two sides of the same coin, and I think both are essential if you want to live more productively. Asking myself whether I accomplished what I intended to was the first of two ways I measured how productive I was over the course of my project.

Time: I observed how intelligently I used my time, how much I got done throughout the day, how many words and pages I wrote/read, and how often I procrastinated. • Attention: I noted what I focused on, how well I focused, and how easily I was distracted. • Energy: I scrutinized how much drive, motivation, and overall energy I had, tracking how my energy levels fluctuated over the course of an experiment.

not all tasks are created equal.

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 though acting on what you know is exactly what you have to do in order to become more productive.

“Pareto Principle,” often referred to as the 80-20 rule. The rule says that 80 percent of [some result] comes from 20 percent of [some cause]. For example, 80 percent of your sales come from 20 percent of your customers, or 80 percent of all income is earned by 20 percent of the people. I think this rule can be applied to productivity as well: a very small number of tasks lead to the majority of what you accomplish.

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

I accomplished the most through just three main tasks. In order, they were:

THE IMPACT CHALLENGE

1. Make a list of everything you’re responsible for in your work. This part of the activity takes the longest, but it feels incredible to get everything you’re responsible for onto a sheet of paper in front of you (or into whatever your preferred digital equivalent is). There’s a good chance you haven’t taken a moment to step back and think about everything you’re responsible for in your work on a weekly or monthly basis. 2. After you’ve collected a list of everything you’re responsible for, ask yourself: If you could just do one item on that list all day, every day, what item would you do that would allow you to accomplish the most with the same amount of time? Put another way, what item on the list is the most valuable to your boss or yourself (if you’re self-employed, like I am)? 3. Finally, ask yourself: If you could do only two more items on that list all day, what second and third tasks let you accomplish the most in the same amount of time?

the Rule of 3. The rule is dead simple: 1. 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.

The three things you identify then become your focus for the day and the week ahead. That’s it.

At the start of every day and week, I also define three personal things I want to accomplish. I don’t always come up with three (and the same is true for my work items), but I find that the ritual lets me feel much more in control of my week ahead and also get excited about the things I have coming up.

“I originally focused on the Rule of 3 because when my manager asked me what the team achieved for the week, he didn’t want a laundry list. He was willing to listen to three compelling outcomes.”

“Simplicity makes it easier to evolve and innovate and deal with complexity.”

THE RULE OF 3 CHALLENGE