Introduction to 10X Productivity Secret
I'm serious. My symptoms are severe.
I have hard time concentrating on the task at hand. I easily lose focus by going too far ahead and start worrying about what could possibly go south. Then, I end up getting emotional and angry because of those things which never occurs in reality.
Other times, I simply drift away to some other things of my long time interest, sex.
It's a mess.
The worst part is most things that I imagine never happen in real life. In the end, just trashy imagination with emotional baggage. No one can get as pathetic as this.
Many times I beat myself down and in my darkest days... I just want to end it....
But fortunately, I've managed to run two companies, one in LA and the other in Seoul. People see me as a person who delivers. Oddly, some of them envy my life style. Just because they have no clue about my ADD and idiosyncrasy that comes with it.
But, here's the catch. In order to be productive or see results, you don't have to be focused at all times. You just need certain time block of the day where you are relatively focused. As long as those blocks are chained by consistent repetition, you're going to get things done. In the end, the desired outcome is automatic.
This is what I want to share with you today. Very simple tip that changed my life.
Let's get on to it.
Presenting the Daily Planner on steroid.
We are going to own this new way of daily planning by break things down into three parts.
1. Tools
For ADD's, accessibility is the key.
I've tried numerous daily planning methods and tools. To-do-list apps, desktop softwares, excel spreadsheet, you name it. Nothing worked for me. It's easy to believe that electronic tools are made accessible. But, it's actually not the case.
Say you have a software that you use in your laptop.
First, you constantly have to switch back and forth by closing or minimizing windows that you've been working on in order to retrieve information from electronic planner. It might be a small distraction. But it adds up.
Second, as you put stuff on your daily planner, the information is going to accumulate. And at some point, you are going to sort out into categories. Finding the right category with the correct index takes another milliseconds in searching. For effective daily planner, you should be able to extract information within a blink of an eye.
Think about this. You probably have bookmarked articles and posts that you've intended to look time to time. You've probably sorted them out and indexed. How many do you remember by correct category label?
I don't even know what I have in my bookmark. It's just a dump.
Every millisecond counts because I have very short attention span.
So, let's tackle it in an old fashioned way. Our good old legal pad and notebook.
- I use Oxford for the legal pad
- For the notebook, my personal affinity towards German brand makes me choose LEUCHTTURM 1917 over classic Moleskine notebook.
2. Getting hands dirty: Plan for the day.
Once you have the tools with you. The rest is easy.
Section I) Today's To-Do's
LAW: Limit to two priorities
Get your legal pad and draw a cross. Horizontal line and vertical line meet in the center. Don't try to be precise, this isn't an art class. You have four rectangles. The upper left quadrant is where you write down things you are going to accomplish.
Now, what are the two most important things that you need to nail down today? The following questions might help to decide.
What gives you the most resistance? What gives you the most sense of achievement if you conquer it today?
It should come our fairly easy. If not, use the lower left section to brainstorm by scribbling. And find your two priorities for today's to-do tasks.
When you have the two priorities set up, draw an arrow and write the first actionable step that gets you started for each priority. You are doing this because like the old proverb, "once you start, you are already halfway done"
Your job is complete with the first section. It's going to look empty and you might have the urge to add stuff in. Please, DON'T.
Section II) Time Tracker
LAW: Record solid working time.
Measuring your productivity by hours you sit in front of a desk is a wrong way of assessing it. But this doesn't mean we are not going to record the solid working hours. We need to do so for the following two reasons.
For the sake of objectivity. When it comes to work, we are very delusional. You probably heard many people say, "I work minimum (stressing the word minimum) of 40 hours a week. This means they have 9-5 job from Monday through Friday. But this is so not true. First, need to take out the lunch hour, and those 30 minutes before and after lunch time where most people are half way disengaged; they're all waiting for that meal time and once they come back from work, it takes time for you to get back on track because of food coma and etc. So good two hours are spent unproductive.
Likewise, you have the first 30 minutes once you arrive at workplace and last 30 minutes before leaving. Not so productive for similar reasons.
The second reason is you want to track it so you become more efficient later. The two priorities that you set up in the first quadrant probably reappear some other day because it's important. We have to know how much we spend on the task, so after couple times of repetition, we start thinking about how we are going to shorten it.
Make sure to write down you starting and ending time. Your ending time is when you stop to take break. Your new starting time is when you resume after the break.
Section III) Sketch
LAW: Don't be neat. Organization comes later.
This is the lower left section mentioned in section I. This is a place where you scribble to brainstorm, or take memos. Don't try to write neatly! For ADDs, our minds run much faster than the hand speed. But box in red some of the ideas that you want to use in the future.
You'll easily run out of space for this section. Use the entire back side for all the scribbles to come.
Section IV) Comments
This is where you write stuff when you have the AHA moment that keeps you motivated and keeps you in the game of mass production. Jot down whatever that empowers you whether it's directly related with the two priorities or not. This is also a place where you squeeze in an idea so you can shorten the process of handling the task that you've worked on today.
Sometimes, you have not much to say. Good, leave it that way.
3. Copying it on your notebook: The power of organized accumulation
LAW: Don't skip this. Planning is useless without this drill
I cannot stress how important this drill is. It's easy but some of you might find it tedious. But you cannot skip it. Daily planning is not about creating a load of to-do's that expands exponentially over time.
You constantly keep track of daily achievement and review at the end of the day. Again, this is how you can be more efficient in handling tasks that recurs in the future.
First, copy what's written in your sections on your notebook. Yes, for Section III, you are not going to copy what you've scribbled. Only what's boxed out in red.
Second, spend at least 10 minutes a day to review it. Don't confine to today's achievement, but yesterday, the day before, or even earlier. Go in a chronological order. Depending on how much time I have, I start from what I'd done 3 weeks ago and all the way up to what I've achieved today. As you go over it multiple times, it takes much shorter time to review quite an amount.
Copying on your notebook may take around 20 minutes. I spend at 40 minutes a day to complete this drill of copying and reviewing.
Final Words
If you've made it this far, you're going to accomplish more than what you've expected. I sincerely hope that this makes difference in you life. You don't need to follow every instruction laid out here. Feel free to tweak it. Just pick up the concept and digest it in you way—whatever makes sense for you and as long as you can be consistent with it.
It's also a good idea to follow it verbatim if that makes things less complicated. Along the way, you'll be making slight changes more suitable for you.
Before I wrap up, I just want to give a credit to two authors for the ground work of this post. The author of "The One Thing", Gary Kelller, and Daniel Levitin who wrote "The Organized Mind".
Go get it. You have no idea what you are capable of.