Productivity Masterclass

Do you want to learn almost everything there is to know about productivity? All the basic rules, principles and tips to make you more productive right at the beginning of a new year?

If your answer was a yes, you’re in the right place cause I collected everything I learned about productivity in this article.

This article is originally based on my notes from the Productivity course from Ali Abdaal. It’s a paid course on Skillshare. I’ll share the most valuable lessons from the course and a lot more with my own experiences and references from different resources. So it will be quite a comprehensive overview of productivity principles and rules.

Before we start

Productivity is not just about finding the best tools and practices and blindly ticking off items from a to-do list. We could be climbing up the stairs to the top of a building, but if it’s not the building we want to be on top of, how effective we were at climbing is totally pointless.

At the end of each section, there will be a reflection exercise for you to gain a clearer view of your goals, approach and the things that have blocked you from being more productive so far.

So please spare at least 30–45 mins to read this article and complete the exercises. Completing the full course takes about 5–6 hours, so I think it’s reasonable considering the amount of time saved for you 🙂

That’s why focusing on your own behaviour, choices, and goals by completing the exercises should be the first step before focusing on the effectiveness of the process and how productive we are.

So let’s start if you’re ready!

What is Productivity?

Productivity can be explained with the following formula:

Productivity = (Useful Output / Time) x Fun x Focus

So let’s talk about each element in the equation:

🎰 Useful Output: The output from the process needs to be useful for our purpose/goal. There’s no point in doing things if they somehow serve the purpose of accomplishing a goal.

⌛ Time: Self-explanatory. The less time we spend on a specific output, the more productive we can become.

🎢 Fun Factor: Enjoying the process of working on something can make things much easier. So the more you enjoy the process of working on something, the more productive you can become.

🎯 Focus: This was not a part of the original equation, but I felt that it’s a really crucial part of productivity, especially for meaningful/creative work. Focus makes a huge difference in these modern times, where we are all more distracted and have less attention span than ever.

As a side note, having fun in the process would be great, but we may not always feel that way in everything we do. So, focus and discipline are more reliable ways of achieving our goals. More on these later.

The Productivity Equation

Let’s dive into the concept of our productivity framework with an analogy from aviation:

In terms of productivity, we can be one of these three roles at any given time:

1. Pilot
2. Plane
3. Engineer

Let’s explain the meanings and roles of each of them:

🧑‍✈️ Pilot 10%

In the pilot mode, we focus on planning and setting our direction and goals. This mode takes about 10% of our time. Once we set the course, we switch to the Plane mode. In this mode, we ensure that our output is meaningful by focusing on the right things and going in the right direction.

✈️ Plane 80%

In the plane mode, we follow the directions created by the Pilot, the role we take on before the Plane mode, which basically means execution. Ideally, this consists of most of our time, about 80%.

👩‍🔬 Engineer 10%

In the engineer mode, we make sure the execution is efficient and that we’re using the right approach and the right tools. We track our progress to assess, understand and improve our process.

It’s helpful to discover new ways to be more productive and question our approach and process of making things every now and then. Especially with the help of science and technology, it’s possible to be much more productive by using new tools, technologies, and approaches. Still, it could also be a hindrance and a way to procrastinate if we focus too much on how we do things rather than executing first and improving along the way as a part of the process.

I like taking some time to spend more time on some of these roles every now and then. This article is a product of my quest to improve my productivity approach, focusing on the right things and discovering new and more modern tools to do that before the end of the year (Pilot and Engineer modes), where I’d like to focus on execution of my goals (Plane mode) in the new year without spending too much time on improving the process.

The good news is that you’ll already have done much for Plane and Engineer modes by the time you finish this article! 🚀

So, here’s your first reflection. Please take some time to reflect on this properly and preferably take some notes. They could be useful for you later on when you re-assess your productivity approach and goals.

Reflection #1

• Which do I struggle with most of all (Pilot, Plane, Engineer)? In what (specific) ways?

The Myth of “I Don’t Have Time”

Time is what we want most, but we use the worst.

Are you someone who never has enough time for things you know you should be doing?

If that’s the case, now you have a new goal!

Eliminate the phrase “I don’t have time” from your dictionary!

It’s all about priorities. Not making the time is an active choice.

Take full responsibility for your life and time. Either accept the fact that you choose not to make time for something or actually make time and do it.

Can’t find time to exercise, read, meditate, etc.?

Maybe you can wake up 30 minutes earlier every day? Maybe you can consider using your breaks during the day, spending less time on your phone and on social media, and watching a few hours less Netflix every week.

Making excuses is always easier than making time, but your future self would be much more grateful if you do the latter.

Think and reflect on the idea that not having time is a choice.

Reflection #2

• What am I avoiding with the phrase “I don’t have time”?
• ✍️ 🏆 Track Your Time for 1 Week & Reflect on it.

The Myth of Motivation

Motivation is a feeling that might help you to get things started. But as we all know, feelings are fleeting, temporary and unreliable. Thus, relying on a feeling to achieve something is a recipe for disaster. No matter how hard we try to get motivated to do something, our progress will not be consistent, and getting motivated will require more and more effort.

What you actually need is not motivation but discipline.

There’s no place for feelings and emotions in discipline, and almost no mind either. Not taking action doesn’t even become an option when we embrace discipline. We immediately take action regardless of how we feel about it.

It may take time to build discipline through habits. Still, discipline has a compounding effect over time, unlike fleeting and unreliable waves of peak performances and sudden drops in motivation. It beats every other path of achieving goals based on motivation, skills, feelings or past achievements.

Discipline is extremely crucial for being consistent in our results; that’s why I’d like to share more from an article that dives deeper into it. Here’s a summary of “Screw Motivation! What you need is Discipline!”.

Why Discipline

Discipline is about cutting the link between feelings and actions and doing it anyway. You get to feel good and buzzed and energetic and eager afterwards.

Motivation is a horrible basis for regular day-to-day functioning and anything like consistent long-term results.

By contrast, discipline is like an engine that, once kickstarted, actually supplies energy to the system. Productivity has no requisite mental state. For consistent, long-term results, discipline trumps motivation, runs circles around it and eats its lunch.

To grow, you want to surf the edge of your comfort zone. The trick here is to make a small change and let your brain accept it as the new baseline. This will make the next step easier because the baseline has moved. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Your brain resists abrupt changes, but gradual changes bypass that resistance.

Deliberate control of exceptions

The best way to manage your vices is to accept and schedule them. You can’t wish them out of existence, but you can take control of them and redirect their inertia by consciously including them in your plan. This is the Judo method.

“Okaaay no more Instagram!” — wrong*.*

“Instagram for 20 minutes in the evening to catch up with friends, and that’s that” — right.

Remember that your brain resists abrupt changes, doubly so when they interfere with immediate gratification. Going cold turkey on psychological addictions is a sure way to initiate a circle of frustration, failure and self-hatred.

You can bypass that by accepting and scheduling the exceptions, with absolutely no exceptions (to the planned exceptions).

Paradoxically, indulgent slacking is unpleasant because it makes you feel guilty and useless. But you will actually enjoy it when you do it in a conscious, planned manner to relax and unwind. There are days for pyjamas and ice cream and binge-watching Gilmore Girls. But you should happen to them, not them to you.

Take small, symbolic steps in the direction of the intended change.

Consistency works because inconsistency literally threatens ego integrity. Consistency is a matter of survival for your sense of self.

Recharge

When cultivating good habits, learn to “recharge your batteries”.

Meditation is the best way to do that. If you want to reduce stress, consider a low-information diet by being extremely aware and selective about what you read, watch, listen and expose yourself to.

The underlying logic of discipline building is to establish a more constructive relationship and improve the balance of power between your higher executive functions — your rational adult mind — and your inner three-year-old who makes a depressing lot of your decisions.

Human personality is like a tree — it grows outwards, adding layers, but the depths never really go away. The toddler is still in there, with its impulsiveness, short attention span, and myopic pursuit of instant gratification. Generally, you want your higher functions to be in control. This is more difficult when you’re tired or stressed, hence the importance of mindfulness/meditation and environmental management.

Motivation Factors

In an ideal world, you would have the extreme discipline to achieve anything you want in life. But it’s a long process to build the habits and the systems to have that kind of discipline. So it might be useful to apply some techniques to hack our brains to motivate ourselves in the meantime.

In terms of taking action, the following methods could be useful:

Make action more fun.
You can listen to music while studying if it makes the process more fun for you. You can turn going to the gym into a game by tracking your progress and comparing the weights you lifted last week and so on (but not anyone else).

Make inaction more painful.
By making not taking action more painful, you’ll force yourself to take action—things like paying money for not doing something or committing to doing something publicly.

Shorten the feedback loop
Usually, it’s hard to stay motivated by focusing on the long-term results as there will likely be no observable changes in the short term. Going to the gym once, twice, or even a month will not have a visible impact. So rather than focusing on the end result, you can focus on your improvement and consistency. It will compound and bring results over time.

Make the outcome clear in your mind
Visualisation is an extremely powerful technique to achieve our goals. For the brain, there’s no difference between a real experience and having that experience through thinking and visualisation. By having an experience through visualisation and feeling grateful for it, we start to convince our mind that we’re worthy of having that experience and have what it takes to experience it in real life.

Reflection #3

• What’s a goal I want to achieve?
• How can I make the process more pleasurable?

The Myth of Multitasking

A scientific fact: The human brain is not designed for multitasking. You can effectively work on only one task at a time. You can do multiple things, but you can’t focus on all of them at the same time.

If you chase two rabbits, you will not catch either one.

Focusing on a single task makes us much more effective. This is the most important factor in the execution of the tasks to achieve a goal: do only one thing at a time. You may feel more productive when you multitask, but be aware of the fact that none of the tasks you work on at the same time will have the same quality — the quality you’d create by working on a single task in a focused manner.

The ideal state we should aim to be in is Flow.

Flow state is an optimal state of consciousness where we feel our best and perform at our best.

There are 2 aspects of the flow state: Focus and Being in the stretch zone.

Focus

Flow state requires full attention. Set your intention and avoid all distractions. Prepare the right environment to work in, and focus on the single task you will be working on.

I want to mention a well-known method I use to focus; the Pomodoro technique. Basically, you focus on a task for a given amount of time (typically for 25 mins) and give regular breaks in between, during which you don’t do any work. That way, focusing becomes easier since your brain knows you’ll soon have time to do whatever you feel like doing other than work. Another useful piece of advice I could share would be to take note of whatever comes to your mind other than the task at hand during the sessions and deal with them later on the break (making a phone call, checking your phone, sending an email and so on). There are lots of applications you can use for the technique. I’ve been using Focus To-Do for some time as it beautifully merges the to-do and Pomodoro techniques within one app with many other free features.

Stretch Zone

The Stretch zone is outside of our comfort zone but not so far as to take us into the “panic zone”.

It’s when we voluntarily engage in a task using up all of our attention that’s just difficult enough to be interesting but not so difficult that it feels frustrating. One of the ways to go into the Stretch Zone is by finding out what’s the most useful & critical thing to do right now for the ultimate goal we want to achieve.

So let’s say we’re running a business; we can ask ourselves, what’s the most crucial step I can take & most valuable skill I can learn right now that could give me the most leverage in my business? Working on that critical step would likely be beyond our comfort zone and into the stretch zone.

Reflection #4

• What’s one (or more) situation when I was in my “flow state”?
• What circumstances & mindsets led to that?
• Can I manufacture those conditions for other stuff I need/want to do?

Parkinson’s Law

Work expands to fill the time we allocate to it, Parkinson’s Law states.

Allocating too much time for something we need to do is a recipe for procrastination and disaster.

From his book Zero to One by Peter Thiel: Think about your 10-year plan and ask yourself how you could achieve it within the next 6 months. What if you had to execute your 10-year plan within the next 6 months? How could you do it?

One of the actionable and practical ways to apply Parkinson’s Law to achieve your goals is to give yourself an artificial deadline to achieve the goal. You can combine it with motivation-related hacks like making the process more enjoyable and not finishing it on time more painful.

Reflection #5

• Make a list of 3–4 long-term tasks you want to do.
• What would you do if you only had half as long to do them?
• What about if you had to do them in the next 24 hours?

Pareto Principle

80% of the results come from 20% of the effort. This principle is applicable in almost every area of life.

To be more productive, before working on a goal, you should always start by determining the most important 20% of the effort you need to focus on. And you can continue doing that after achieving the initial 20% by asking the same question again and progressively improving your results as much as you need & find meaningful.

For instance, I’ve been using Stronglifts 5x5 program at the gym, which beautifully implements this principle in weight training by focusing on the most basic and crucial exercises that create the biggest improvement.

Reflection #6

• What 20% of my work drives 80% of my “useful output”?
• What’s taking up 80% of my time but not actually contributing much to my outcomes?

Newton’s First Law of Motion

An object is at rest or travelling at a constant velocity unless acted on by an external, imbalanced force. This means if something is still, it will stay still, and if something is moving, it will keep moving unless an external force acts on them.

The way it applies to productivity is that if we don’t do anything, it will require a force/motivation to get started, but once we get moving, we tend to move forward. So the hardest thing is to get started.

Hacks for Getting Things Started

• One of the best hacks you can use is the 5-Second Rule by Mel Robbins. If you have the instinct to act on a goal, you must physically move within 5 seconds, or your brain will kill it. Use that 5-second window to do the following: When you feel the urge to do something, start counting backwards to yourself from 5 to 1: 5–4–3–2–1. As soon as you hit “1”, push yourself to move. You have to take physical action!
• One of the ways to get started is to apply the 2-Minute Rule, mentioned in the Getting Things Done book by David Allen. It suggests that if doing something takes less than 2 minutes, do it now. Cause the effort of doing it is insignificant, but having loads of those things in mind will affect your focus and make your life more stressful.
• Another way to get things started is to apply the 5-Minute Rule, which is about only doing something for 5 minutes without focusing on the outcome or finishing the whole thing, especially if it’s something that we procrastinate and find somewhat daunting. This works great cause it’s easier to convince our brains to do something for just 5 minutes, and once we start, it will feel much easier to get going.
• Eliminating friction and preparing the environment by doing relatively mindless/simpler things that are related to your goal can also help get things started. Let’s say you don’t want to exercise; things like filling up your water bottle/preparing your protein shake, putting on your exercise clothing and wearing your shoes will make it easy to start exercising.

Reflection #7

• Leave this article for now, and do something you’ve been putting off. I’ll be here when you’re done 🙂

The Power of Habits

There’s no point in becoming productive if we don’t have the habits to make progress consistent. The compound effect is the most important rule in personal development. By improving just by 1%, we’d be 37 times better at what we do by the end of a year!

In Atomic Habits book, the author James Clear talks about habits as a way to define your identity, not things you do to reach a particular goal. When a habit becomes a part of your identity, it becomes more sustainable. Not doing it also feels worse because identity is a crucial part of our existence; it’s how we make sense of the world and define ourselves in it.

So rather than thinking that “I need to wake up to be more productive”, we could make it a part of our identity by saying, “I’m a morning person; I like waking up early”. Or rather than “I should eat healthy to avoid getting fat”, we could say, “I am a healthy person, and I always eat healthily”.

In a similar but negative way, if you’re struggling at something, don’t reinforce that behaviour and don’t make it a part of your identity by defining yourself in that way. So by saying things like “I procrastinate/can’t focus/get bored easily”, you reinforce that behaviour in your mind, and struggling with those things starts becoming a part of your identity and harder to get rid of.

Reflection #8

• What 3 things would boost my productivity if I made them a habit?
• How can I help make those habits stick?

The Daily Highlight

The daily highlight is an idea from the book Make Time, which is about setting a highlight, a main goal for the day. In the morning or the night before, you can also do a brain dump by listing all the things you’d like to achieve that day, and one of them would be the highlight/the most important thing to complete for the day.

Reflection #9

• What chunks of the day do I waste time in ways I’d rather not? What useful (small) things could I do with that time instead?

Productive Procrastination/Downtime

Productive procrastination is a form of procrastination by doing something that is usually creative and helpful for you in one way or another, an idea from the book Make Time.

For instance, when you procrastinate completing a web project, you could look for websites that are similar to yours and try to learn from them. Or, when you have a break from studying something, instead of scrolling through Instagram, you could try playing an instrument you’d like to learn or practice the new words from the language you’re learning.

Downtimes are periods of time during the day when we’re not busy with anything, like breaks, lunchtime or when we wait for something.

Most of us are too conditioned to think we need downtime to do a lot of unproductive stuff like scrolling through Instagram, binge-watching a TV show or just zapping through the TV channels. However, we can enjoy doing more productive/creative stuff that serves us and still makes us feel rested.

We can achieve many things during these times if we choose to do so. And making “I’m a productive person” a part of your identity really helps you to do so.

Reflection #10

• What items are on my bucket/task list? Can I procrastinate on my way to progress? How so?

Fun Factor

What is the point of being productive if we’re not enjoying the process? If you think you’ll be happier when you accomplish a goal by being more productive, but you feel like crap all the way long, you get it wrong. If you don’t enjoy your life now, you won’t be enjoying it then, either.

Jim Carry says;

I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.

So find ways to make the process more enjoyable. First, become aware of the fact that it’s either you made the decision to do what you’re doing or it’s a consequence of a decision you made at some point. And if you know that you need to be doing that, why not enjoy the process of doing it? It’s your life. Complaining that things are hard or not enjoyable doesn’t make sense cause it’s you being unhappy in the process.

Your self-talk is extremely important. Also, the language you use is crucial. Rather than using “have to”, use “get to” instead. “I have to study” → “I get to study”. Rather than thinking of the things you do as obligations, turn them into choices you willingly make.

Reflection #11

• What is something that I’m currently not enjoying but I have to do anyway? How would I make this stuff more enjoyable?

Summary

Phew!.. If you managed to make it to the end, congratulations! 🎉

I hope this was useful for you. Please review this article whenever you need a refresher, and check the recommended books mentioned in the article; I also listed them below for convenience.

Please share this article with people who you think would benefit from it.

Please join me on my journey for a meaningful, fulfilled life by subscribing to my blog here. I’ll be writing about things I have passion for; financial freedom, creativity, music, coding, learning, books, travelling, spirituality and more.

See you again soon.

Mentioned Books

1. Atomic Habits
2. Getting Things Done
3. Make Time
4. 5-Second Rule
5. Zero to One