Free notes!: "2 hour Productivity" Online Course by Calvin Torra

Hey Guys! As promised i'll be sharing with you my notes from various books/online courses that i indulge myself in so you can get all the value without having to go through it yourself!

Today's course is "2 Hour productivity" By Calvin Torra, an extremely straightforward and empowering course on how to use tools and systems to skyrocket your productivity levels and start powering through your goals.

An essential step to take before being able to dig deeper into more technical knowledge.

Ps: This is not the most structured set of notes, but i believe it's diluted enough to be a fast read and consistent enough to get the point across. 

Let's get to it!

  I - Setting goals.

• Is the most important thing you could do in your life right now.
• Enables you to reach that hidden potential you've been yearning for.
• You have to make your own luck
• Talent can only get you so far (You would know that)
• You need to keep yourself accountable for maximizing your natural talent and short term/Long term goals enable you to do that!
• "what pain can i choose to live with?" Don't think only of the results or extravagant lifestyle you want, think of the sacrifices you're willing to make. That will allow you to endure the grueling journey ahead and prepare you.
• Setting goals saved the author's life; it gave him meaning. Write them down!
• "you need to take massive action to overwhelm the thinking mind"
• Break the goals down to tiny steps.
• Goals themselves are worthless without massive actions.

II - So how can i beat procrastination?

• Why do we let go of our goals though?
• The main killer here is procrastination.
• "Work contracts to fit the time we give it" > Parkinson's law: Since our minds want to conserve energy they will adapt to the period of time we give for the task to be completed.
• Akrasia (Acting against one's better judgement); Ancient name for procrastination, fucking ancient greeks had to deal with that shit
• We are terrible at discerning instant gratification versus long term improvement.
• Try aligning both angles; try aligning your present self with your future self.
• PRACTICE delaying instant gratification, willpower is a muscle!
• Enkrateia: "To be in power over one's self" Polar opposite of Akrasia. This is what we want to achieve here.

Ways to defeat procrastination:

1. Create commitment devices: Facilitate doing good habits and make bad habits harder; make it easier for yourself. Ie: Taking bad influences away and creating an environment that has more positive ones.
2. Minimize momentum friction:  friction is always on the start, bypass the start and you'll get into flow state so jump into the water!
3. Initiate implementation intentions:  schedule things ahead with accuracy, time included (use deadlines)
4. Goal competition: your goals will be competing against each other for time and energy. Structure your goals and do first things first. Step by step, goal by goal, one thing at a time.

III - Screw motivation.

• Screw motivation, it is overrated.
• The results of a research from the British journal of health psychology concludes that discipline and planning are what work. Use the following formula: "During the next week i will complete at least (Repetition) of (thing) on (Day) at (Time) in (place)"
• Plan your days bro. Meals too.
• Fail-safe strategy would be an if-then solution; add a segment to your plan that states what to do in case you miss stuff.
• The more that you plan, the more freedom you achieve.

IV - So how do you set these plans?

• "We can either make a living or we can design a life"
• The decision process: We need to first make an assessment with where we currently are, how satisfied we are with certain things with honesty. Breaking your situation down will give you clarity on what to tackle.
• Dreams and goals: Take time, alone with no distraction to dig deep and see what you truly want.
  Many of our dreams are never expressed, let them surface and make them a reality.
• Few roles about SMART Goals: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time sensitive. 
• There's no space here for vagueness, set up KPIs and MOSes, be specific and set your goals up in a measurable way. Ie: Instead of saying i want to make a lot of money, set X amount. Instead of just saying you want to write a novel, set a word count for the next month or week!
• Make sure your goals are attainable in the time frame you set and that you can break it down to small chunks to avoid overwhelm.
• Goals also need to be relevant to your core values and principles. Not to others.
• A goal contracts to the time we give it, set a deadline and time frame for it. 
• "The shortest pencil beats the strongest memory". Write your goals down.
• Frequently review your goals, don't let them just float in your notes, it will also help reinforce them and evaluate if they're still relevant.
• Keep your goals close to your chest, scientific study shows that if you tell others about your goals to a lot of people you're less likely to make it. The mind mistakes words for actions and the gratification you get from sharing your goals may be enough to make you complacent.

V - Maintaining momentum

• Want to keep being motivated? Partake in tasks of "Just manageable difficulty" to avoid boredom or frustration.
• Keep yourself on the edge, but don't fall. That is how you achieve flow state.
• As psychologist Gilbert Brim put it: "One of the important sources of human happiness is working on tasks at a suitable level of difficulty, neither too hard nor too easy."

So basically, to maintain momentum just:

1. Engage in tasks of manageable difficulty
2. Set clear goals
3. Only focus on the task at hand
4. Give yourself enough time to complete the goal.

VI - The format, The perfect monday

• Don't join the ranks of the Monday complainers and stop dreading work, recreation is overrated and deep work produces deep happiness.
• Agree with me now, do your hardest not to complain about Mondays again. Mondays are going to be your best friend
• Now it's time to set our schedule and goals, let's make sure to review this every morning for 14 days.
• You want to make your dreams and goals a part of your being, ingrain them into yourself so much that they lift you up once you hit a bump.

Let's answer these questions together:Answer them as if you already had these things, as if it's already a reality.
If there were no limitations or consequences holding you back, what would your perfect average Monday look like?

1. Where would you live? Why? How would it make you happy?
   
2. What would your house look like? In detail, what are the rooms like?
   
3. What time would you wake up?
   
4. What would you do in the morning? Why? How would it make you feel? What would you eat?
   
   
   
5. What would you spend half of your day doing? What would you do first? What would you eat at lunch? With whom? What are your friends like?
   
6. What would you do for personal fulfillment?
   
7. What life purpose would you strive to achieve?
   
   
8. What would your business or job be?
   
9. What time would you start work?
   
   
10. How many hours or days a week would you work?
    
    
11. What would you do at work?
    
12. What are your clients or customers like? How do they see you?
    
13. What is your relationship with your partner like? What would they be like?
    
14. Why do your family appreciate you?
    
15. What would you eat for dinner? Where would you eat it?
    
16. What would you do at night? What would you do for fun? What activities help you unwind? With whom?
    
17. What would your thoughts be as you close your eyes to sleep?
    
    Pick out specific points and we'll start reverse engineering goals out of these? How would you get to the life you wrote down?This is where your long term goals come from, and from here we can small chunk it.
    Then we will begin to assign time frames for goals.
    Congratulations, you've just written your road map to success in life.Don't forget to review this as part of your morning routine
    
     
    VII - Mental spring cleaning
    

• Information overload: We're overstimulated through social media, the Internet and various other stimuli. This distracts us and shatters our focus because of our fear of missing out on potentially relevant or important information. Avoid this digital loop at all costs; You know what you need to do and tell yourself, would you check for these trivialities if you were in a crisis? Well you are. "The biggest crisis is when you're not in one."
•  You brain is constantly being pinged by unresolved business that is stealing your attention away, to get clarity you must identify your distractions and decide how you're going to take care of solving them. And afterwards resolve to what you want to engage in.
  "Clean the mental inbox" By taking care what's on your mind first.

What are they for me? ------------------------ How do i deal with them?

1. 
   
2. 
   
3. 
   
4. 
   
5. 
   
6. 
   
7. 
   
8. 
   
9. 
   
10. 
    

See? Yuo already know what to do.
IX - The 80/20 of mental energy.

• The thing you're avoiding the most is probably your highest priority
• How much mental energy could you free up by doing it?
• See what's the 20% that are sucking up 80% of your energy
• Eat the frog, do the toughest thing first and it'll be smooth sailing.
• If you have to eat 2 frogs, eat the ugliest one first - Start with the hardest task first.
• Read The War of art, steven pressfield's concept of resistance.
• The thought of doing the task is a lot worse than doing it.
• Discipline yourself to putting your head down and doing the hard task first and nothing else until then.
• Sometimes there are tasks that rely on others being done first; what tasks will do a domino effect if you do it first?

X - Trimming the Grey fat.

• Discover the situations or tasks that are stealing mental energy outside of work. (for example game, social activities or lifestyle)
• When we're experiencing internal friction and being in a grey are in our personal lives it's very hard to focus
• For me:
  

XI - Finding your greatest leverage.

• What exactly is focus? The opposite of multitasking.
  Doing one thing and ignoring all the others.
• Our attention span is shrinking; it'll be a rare trait you must develop
• What do you need to learn or achieve to get leverage for your goals? Pick 3 for 3 years:

1. 
   
2. 
   
3. 
    

• Be constantly learning and reading about those goals. It's scary how little people read about their careers
• Take notes: Main concept; Facts about the concept; New vocabulary; Conceptual laws of this books; Procedures and tools; Create a flowchart to represent each chapter. >>>>>>>>>>>> Implement immediately or teach it to someone
  
   XII - Power morning ritual.
  
• Sometimes we just wake up in low vibration, it gets dangerous if it perpetuates every day.
• Let us stop relying on feelings for motivation; let's use systems.
• We can use habits to kick start out day in strength so the high vibration perpetuates and we don't get stuck in a rut
• Let's go!:

1. First meal; A healthy breakfast helps you keep the healthy food momentum going, energizes your body and reduces brain fog.
2. Hydration; Drink a ton of water as soon as you wake up, first thing. It's essential to mental clarity.
3. Workout first thing after drinking the water; Minimal street workout routine + Stretches; changes your mood for the whole day.
4. Meditate: Get into presence at the beginning of the day, will keep you refreshed for the rest of it.
5. Ignore social media unless you need to.
6. Schedule your day
7. As soon as you leave home, always open the first set: will get you in a social mood
8. If you still got time, it goes to reading and education.

Work them slowly and steadily.

XIII - Multitasking and Executive Control

• Multitaskers are much more easily distracted.
• Multitasking turns your brain to mush
• "We kept looking for what multitaskers were better at, but we didn't find it" 
• Multitasking led to an apparent IQ drop of about 15 points.
• Multitasking overloads our brain, resulting in a decrease in our creative abilities 
• executive controls: your brain doesn't process two things at the same time when you're multitasking, it switches between both constantly in a very rapid matter which leads it to overload.

XIV - B60+E60 system.

• Ignore your goals, build systems and stick to them.
• Goals are designed to motivate you; But we've already established that motivation is bullshit!
• Goals make the assumption that you need to FIX something in your life and that you won't be happy until you do....
• Turning your goal into a system allows you to small chunking tasks; allows you to get small wins that keep you going and to enter a feedback loop to keep sharpening the saw!
• Goals set the destination, systems power you through to reach it.

Alright, now let's go into the bulk of getting shit done:First let's get a few things out of the way; Make sure you:

1. Engage in a morning ritual and wake up that one hour earlier
2. Decide which tasks matter and don't get lost in the clutter
3. Eat the frog; avoiding the frog will just make you sad man!
4. Make sure you disconnect when working, remove all distractions.
5. Do not multitask. No social media, no jumping back and forth between tasks.
6. Work on core tasks, don't engage in proactive procrastination.

Now let's crack into the system!

1. Grab a timer - Preferably not your phone
2. Set it for 50 minutes
3. Uninterrupted work until the timer sets off
4. Set the timer for 10 minutes
5. Rest
6. Rinse and repeat.

XV - Avoiding distractions

• We're addicted to wasting our precious time.
• We often make decisions based on the environment we find ourselves in. - control the environment to make it hard to make poor decisions! (Ie; Not stocking your fridge with beer, harder to drink while working!)
• It's almost impossible to stick to good habits in a poorly thought out environment; figure out your buttons and create an environment that empowers you!
• Visualization + Practice has the most impact on behavioral change.
• You can practice visualizing the situations where you usually procrastinate, then instead of falling for the temptation visualize doing the right thing.

XVI - Tracking progress

• "You can't manage what you can't measure" - Peter Drucker
• Massive improvement comes from small improvements; satisfying the small improvement keeps us going. Hence the upward spiral.
• Each small task we complete with the system is noted down to track progress.
• Focus on the recent past and use your tracking to get feedback loops.
• "Recent results drive our future actions"
• A study has revealed that positive emotions are cause by positive behaviors and their accomplishments and that perhaps, pressure isn't the best way to get people going.
• Use positive reinforcement to keep your momentum going by rewarding yourself for milestones
  (Positive reinforcement is the law in behavioural psychology that displays an increase in a behaviour if it is rewarded after it is completed)

I personally use evernote, you can use pen and paper or whatever as well.
Review your progress after 30 days:

• Are you still on track?
• Are the goals still important to you?
• Are the systems you built still the best?

Congraaats! You're on the path to being your most productive self!  

If you've enjoyed reading through the notes, please consider supporting the author by buying the course for a much more detailed and concise delivery!