10 Productivity Frameworks That Changed My Life

Hi everyone, my name is Matt and welcome to a new episode of the Connect the Dots podcast. I'm so grateful for your time and attention and earbuds as you are going about your day, whether you're, you know, wherever you're going or whatever you're doing. Thank you for spending a little bit of it with me. In this episode, I'm going to be sharing my top 10 productivity frameworks. These are ideas, concepts, systems, however you want to term them, that have literally changed my life and the way that I see my work, even different things about how I live my life just in general. So these are all concepts that have made a really big impact on me. I've talked about them at length often on my YouTube channel. So I'm going to link to some videos and you may hear me reference some videos in each framework or principle. But the other thing is I wanted to give you just a really succinct a succinct, simple list of these different ideas and concepts so that you could dive deeper as you want to learn more about them. But I talk about them on my YouTube channel. We've talked about some of them already on the podcast, like QMWD goal planning. And we also talk about them a lot in my mastermind and in the Productivity Power-Up Accelerator that like kind of goes over all of these in way more detail with coaching and in a community setting as well. So make sure you check out all the links in the show notes to learn more about each of these, to go do a deeper dive, and maybe to get a little bit of coaching and support along the way. The first productivity framework that has changed my life is the Bullet Journal. Now, those of you who have been following my YouTube channel and my email newsletter for quite a while, this will come as no surprise to you, but the simplicity of the Bullet Journal is and always will be the biggest draw for me. I love how like I can just be focused on it. I love that I can just jot something down. I do personally really love writing, you know, pen on paper. And so that is a little bit of an analog tactile feel that personally I don't know if I'll ever give up. Now I do know that there are obviously some really big advantages to using a task manager, using some kind of productivity tool that is an app or something on the web. And I do use some different productivity software tools. But when it comes to starting the day, looking at this is what I intend to do, like having an intention for the day, for me there's nothing better than having a bullet journal where I can just be really focused and distraction-free on, on the bullet journal and just write down these are the top things that I want to be intentional about today, these are the things that matter to me. And then something else that I'll do is a little bit of an extra tip is I'll I'll leave the Bullet Journal open so that I can see it throughout the day. I'll leave it near my computer, and that way if I get distracted or I find I'm kind of spinning my wheels, like, okay, what did I intend to do today? I haven't really been spending time doing that. I can come back to the Bullet Journal. Some of you have heard me make the comparison between like focused productivity and meditation, and what they tell you in meditation, something that I always try and remember, is even if you get distracted while you're meditating, which is just, you know, something that's going to happen, it's not that you feel bad about being distracted, but it's that you have an intention to come back to the breath. And so even if you get distracted during your work, that's okay. Like, those things happen, especially in the world we live in now. But the intention is to come back to the task, to come back— for me, to just look at the Bullet Journal and be like, oh yeah, that's the thing that I intended to be doing, let's come back and start doing that again. So that's number one. Bullet Journal method. Number 2 is the QMWD goal-setting framework. That's the second productivity framework that's changed my life. It's one that a lot of people talk about, like different goal breakdown strategies, and this is just the one that I've come up with. I talked about this in detail in a previous episode of Connect the Dots. Gonna link that below if you want to deep dive on it. But essentially what QMWD is, is looking at what you want your quarterly or 3-month Q goal to be. And you're going to break that down into what are 3 monthly milestones that I need to meet, that if I hit each of those milestones, I'm going to naturally achieve my goal at the end of the quarter. And then for each monthly milestone, you break that down into what are my 4 weekly deliverables. And then you break down each weekly deliverable into, okay, what do I need to do today, maybe the next day, a few days this week, to make sure that I'm getting enough, like, daily tasks done that I can hit that weekly deliverable. And if I do that each week of the month, I'm going to naturally hit my monthly milestone. And if I do that for each month, then I'm going to naturally hit the quarterly goal that I have set for myself. So you see how it all kind of fits together, and also that you are kind of naturally getting to the outcome that you want just by doing the things that you have set up every single day and every single week, which leads to the monthly milestone, and eventually a quarterly goal outcome. Okay, so you've heard me reference outcome goals a couple of times, and that leads me into the third productivity framework that has changed a bit of my life, and that is understanding the difference between system goals and outcome goals. Now, a system-based goal, just to give you an example— actually, let's start with outcome goals, because like just getting this podcast to launch was an outcome-based goal. An outcome-based goal is something that either has a deadline or a really specific series of tasks that once you accomplish all of them or complete them, then the goal is you've reached that goal. That goal is complete. You hit the outcome. So getting the podcast Connect the Dots to launch and these first few episodes, that was my initial goal outcome. That was actually my Q4 goal, and then I had all the monthly milestones and everything. And so that was an example of an outcome-based goal. Now, a system-based goal is something that doesn't really have an end. It's just a system that you have in place and you're going to work that system as long as you want to for whatever goal you have. And so for me, still related to the podcast, publishing a weekly episode is an example of a system-based goal. I don't have a specific outcome of, okay, I'm gonna do 10 episodes, I'm gonna do 50 or even 100 episodes. I just have an intention to create and publish a new Connect the Dots episode every single week. And so you see the difference between those two? There is a distinction between I want to get the podcast to launch and then I want to have a system of publishing new episodes every single week. So understanding the difference between your system-based goals and your outcome-based goals are really important. And again, I talk about that in another, another episode of Connect the Dots and in a YouTube video. So I'm going to link both of those in the description and in the show notes below. The fourth productivity framework that has changed my life is simple time tracking. Now, time tracking can feel a little bit OCD, but basically what I do for time tracking is I retroactively or reflectively kind of look back at my day every 2 to 4 hours and just kind of think about and remember what was I spending my time on during these last couple hours. Was it writing? Was it making a YouTube video? How much did I get distracted? Did I find myself going down a rabbit hole on social media or doomscrolling for, for a long time? What was I doing? Can I track that time? The real reason I do this, because one of, one of the reasons that people feel hesitant about time tracking is that they don't really want to know what they've spent their time doing, because it can feel like, oh, I wasn't as productive as I thought I was. Now here's my counter to that. Until we have an objective awareness of the amount of time we spend on different parts of our work in our life, we won't be able to create the clarity in our lives and in our work to know like, okay, I have been spending more time than I expected on this thing that actually doesn't matter as much to me. So now I need to shift some of that time into a goal or a habit, a practice that will actually make an impact in my life and in my work. So that's where time tracking can be a really big win, even though it can feel a little tough and a little frustrating. And you do a lot of self-judging when it comes to time tracking, it can be incredibly important and vital for raising awareness of knowing what you're spending your time on so you can better shift it into something that matters more to you, something that you have a strong intention to do. And that leads us into the fifth productivity framework that has changed my life, and that is calendar blocking. Because once you have an awareness of the time that you're spending on different parts of your life and work, now I can calendar block. I can be a more effective calendar blocker because I know like, okay, creating a new YouTube video takes 8 to 12 hours. So let's just say I need to block out 12 hours this week to create, you know, edit and publish a new YouTube video. So now I know like I have to really make time for this and I have to have some focus time, like uninterrupted time for it as well. And so I'll probably block out all of Tuesday and half of Wednesday just for YouTube. And that helps me not just arrange and schedule and coordinate the other types of work that I'm doing— work with clients, work with different projects and goals that I have, you know, doing the Connect the Dots podcast— it also makes me like a more effective, like proactive worker as well. Because in the past, if I was just like, okay, well, you know, I need to do YouTube videos, I'll shoot some here and I'll kind of put on the schedule or just on the to-do list.. And I may think to myself like, oh, well, this is only going to take a few hours. And then I do spend a few hours on it, like, shoot, I literally only filmed the video maybe, and now I still have to edit it. That editing always takes longer than filming, just FYI. And then I have to publish, I have to do the thumbnail, to do all these things. And so I could get really frustrated early on because like I thought it was only going to take 4 to 6 hours and it ends up taking 8 to 12. Like, okay, you know, it, it creates a lot of overwhelm. But if you track your time, then I can better understand like, oh, it's going to take 8 to 12 hours, I need to block this out. I do my, I do my time tracking, then I do my calendar blocking. Do you see how they work together in tandem? So calendar blocking is the 5th productivity framework that has really changed the way that I work and live. The 6th productivity framework that has absolutely changed how I see my time and how I am productive with my time are the twin rules of 70/20/10 and 50/30/20. Now, I just did a podcast episode about these 2 productivity frameworks for time management, and so just go back and listen to literally the previous episode of Connect the Dots. We do a deep dive on 70/20/10 and 50-30-20. But to give you a quick recap on what they are, 70-20-10 is basically Google's rule for innovation. And they're saying that we need to spend 70% of our time on the core business, so say search and ads. Then we need to spend 20% of our time on exciting new opportunities. So that could be like, you know, Google Maps at one point was an exciting new opportunity. And then 10% of our time is on some wild idea that we're just interested in. We don't even know what kind of impact it's going to be, but it's interesting and it's fun, and we're going to spend 10% of our time on that. So you're kind of spending 30% of your time working on new things that you just, you don't know what the opportunity could be. You don't know what the possibility could be, but it could open up a brand new area of your work, of your business, of your role. The most famous Google example that came from the 20-10% time is Gmail. Like, that was just something that someone thought was interesting and it kind of grew from there. So that's the 70-20-10 rule from Google. The other one is the 50-30-20 rule from Jim Collins, author of Good to Great. And the quickest way that I can explain this is that Jim Collins tracks all of his time and he wants to spend basically 50% of his working time on creative projects. So whether that's writing— he is an author, so a lot of that is writing. And so that's 50% of his time. 30% of his time is on teaching and researching. And so what I really find encouraging about this is the 30% time researching and teaching and learning helps support the 50% of creative time. So that's really important to think about, and I've been thinking about a lot. A lot about that myself. And the 20% time, the remaining 20% time for Jim Collins is where he does the admin, the managing, you know, just kind of the, the day-to-day stuff. And I think sometimes he even kind of batches that into just 1 or 2 days of his week. So he might spend like half a day on admin twice a week, but everything else is either researching and learning or creative work. The 7th productivity framework that has changed my life is the PARA framework, from my friend Tiago Forte. Now I learned about this from Tiago's blog. I'll link to the article in the show notes below, and also from his excellent course Building a Second Brain that I went through. And PARA stands for Projects, Areas, Research, and Archives, and it's basically a way to organize all of your information, everything that you might be doing. So let me give you a quick, a quick example, and if you want to deep dive, check out the article below.. But the idea is that all of your projects, and now these are mostly outcome-based goals. So it's something like launch a podcast, develop your online course. It could even be something very simple and small, like creating a, a new Connect the Dots podcast episode. All of those are examples of projects because they have a definitive ending. Now, areas are things that are just kind of ongoing. So you could think of these kind of like systems., but the podcast itself is an area. Each episode is a project. So you can also have plenty of non-work areas like, you know, my marriage is an area, being a parent, homeschooling, all these different things are different types of areas of my life. You know, personal fitness, coaching, all these things are examples of areas. Now research are things that you are just simply building research on. This can often be one of the larger folders, if you will, of different things that you're researching. And then the other one is archive. So once something is no longer in projects, areas, or research, like a piece of content or a folder or just like a series of ideas that you have, then it just goes into the archive. And so to give you a quick example of like how an idea can move through or, you know, a concept can move through each of these areas, Let's just say at the beginning I'm researching how to create a really great podcast. So I have a podcasting research folder or something on Notion, let's say, for example, because that's where I have my PARA dashboard. And so I will research what kind of ideas that I have for podcasts and how to make a really great podcast. When I put together and start the Let's Launch the Connect the Dots podcast show, that goes into Projects. And now that I've launched it, now everything about Connect the Dots moves into the Podcasting area of my dashboard. This is a very visual concept, and so I encourage you to check out Tiago's post on this. It'll give you more, it'll give you more, uh, yeah, kind of context for it and help you visualize a bit better. This is also something we go over a ton in both the Mastermind and in the Productivity Power-Up course. There are a couple of different ways of looking at PARA that I've, I've come up with as well, but it all comes from Tiago. Great concept, great productivity framework, also kind of loosely based initially on David Allen's Getting Things Done. So all of those are kind of fitting together in, in this productivity framework. The 8th productivity framework that has changed my life is the concept of just starting small. Start small. And this was so important to me. It's been important to me ever since I started my YouTube channel when I really put this into practice of just doing a small thing consistently will help you build up the confidence and momentum to do bigger things consistently as well. And to just— that confidence is so huge. It's something that isn't talked about a lot in creative work and sometimes even productivity, but the confidence to keep doing what you feel, what you believe you can keep doing, is something that just isn't talked about very much. And I think it's such an important thing. And the best way to build that is to start small and try and be as consistent as you can. So a few different examples on this— we'll just, we'll just keep using the podcast as an example. If I had it in my head that in order to have a great podcast, each episode had to be 30 to 45 minutes or up to an hour. That feels a little like, even now, that still feels a little intimidating. If instead I just said to myself like, okay, all you have to do is write down a list of things that you want to talk about on the podcast for this episode, and you're just going to, you know, talk to the mic and go over each of those items. That is a good way to start small. It doesn't matter how long it takes, it doesn't matter like how it sounds, but just starting small and being consistent is something that allowed me to build confidence and momentum as I continued with, as I built this podcast. And now as I'm continuing to build this podcast, I'm still kind of thinking about that structure of starting small. The other thing that is related to this, because a lot of people think and ask, I'm going to do another podcast about this concept specifically, is, you know, how many times should I try something, or how will I know if something is a good fit for me? And the idea that I have for this, the concept that I've been practicing myself, is that of the 10-rep rule. And so you want to do something or publish something 10 times to get kind of a good feel for what you're going to be doing. Like, is this really a good fit for me? Now you want to do these pretty consistently, maybe not every day, but, you know, 10 to 20 times is usually a good, a good, you know, repetition schedule for understanding is this going to be a good fit for me? So that would have been like doing 10 episodes of the podcast, writing 10 blog post articles, filming 10 YouTube videos, going to work out at, you know, a new gym, like getting a personal trainer for 10 sessions, trying to eat a different type of lunch for, you know, 10, 10 times. So there are all these kind of different applications of an idea like the 10 rep rule, but it gives you enough experience and maybe momentum to be like, okay, I'm good on this, or heck yeah, let's go, let's keep this rolling. The 9th productivity framework that has meant a lot to me and has been really impactful is the idea of startup and shutdown routines for every single day. Now this has become even more important for me since I started working from home. And working from home for me started 5 years ago because ConvertKit, the company that I used to work at, has always been remote, and Podia, the next company that I worked at, was also remote. And so I've been working from home for a really long time. The difference in 2020 for me was that now everyone is at home all the time, which is still a difference. And so having a startup routine for my workday where I looked at the Bullet Journal, I made sure that I had my top 3 tasks, I kind of blocked out, made sure time on my calendar was blocked out. I'm using these other productivity frameworks that we've already talked about. But I added meditation, I added in reading time as well, and that helps me start up for a particular day. It kind of gives me that boot-up routine just like your computer uses. So we can use some of these same concepts and frameworks, and then you do the same thing to kind of shut down for the day. The 10th and final productivity framework that has changed my life is the idea of taking proper smart notes, or what I like to call them, quick notes, and And when you are a smart note-taker, the huge benefit that I have found with this is that you never really start your content from scratch again because you have these notes. And sometimes for me, they're literal note cards that contain a single idea that I can look through all of them based on the categories of like different notes and topics that I have and start to assemble a piece of content just for the notes that I have. And so for example, when I was thinking about like, okay, what are the 10 most impactful frameworks that I have like either created or learned over the past 5 years, then the only, the only thing that I had to do to prepare this episode was to go into like my principles, frameworks, mental models cluster of notes, and just start to pick out the 10 that have made the most impact on me. And then like I just made a quick, a quick note in like on a single sheet of paper that's sitting right here that is like, okay, make sure you cover all these things. But these notes became the building blocks of this episode, and I've done this for a lot of podcast episodes. And so I just have put together a few different videos on taking SMART or quick notes. Quick, by the way, stands for quality, unique, individual, contextual, and knowledgeable. So if you want to learn more about that, please, please, please make sure that you check out the article and the video that is linked below. You're going to learn a lot more about SMART note-taking. It is one of, one of the best things from a content creator or from a researcher standpoint that you can do to reduce anxiety about what you're learning and also boost the amount of creativity that you have because you're distributing it across many different moments throughout your day, week, and month instead of being like, okay, well, it's time to be creative because this is the time that I blocked in my calendar for writing. That can still feel very anxious. I know many of you that I've coached or worked with or just exchanged emails with, the moment of creativity, even if you time block it, can still feel really stressful. And what proper, smart, quick note-taking does is in the moment that you've blocked for creativity, instead of it being like this stressful buildup to like, okay, I've had a breakthrough, it instead becomes like a treasure hunt for your mind of looking through the notes that you've already taken and being like, okay, I'm going to assemble them this way, almost like a, you know, a Lego, a Lego structure of putting these different concepts together. Like, okay, now I have something really unique. For this piece of content that I'm creating. One more thing before you go, you heard me mention a couple of times the Productivity Power-Up Accelerator and also the Creative Mastermind that I run for curious, ambitious, focused people like you. And the thing that I want to share with you is that there is a resource and a way to learn more and get plugged into this community and maybe be a part of our next cohort. But just go to 3, that's the number 3 keys like you use in a car or a, you know, door. So 3keys.fyi, there's going to be a link in the description and the show notes below. But if you want to learn more about working together and getting some of these principles with guidance, with coaching, and also with community accountability, because it is an interactive live program that we go through, this is the best way that I have found to teach and to learn and to really instill these principles and frameworks in your life and in your work. But thank you so much for listening. Thank you for those of you that have left a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts. That is where most of you are listening, I can tell from the analytics, and also the place where the podcast has the most opportunity to grow on the Apple Podcast charts. So if you're listening there, or you can go leave a rating and a review if you like the show, it would mean a ton to me. And no matter where you're listening though, or however you're listening, I really appreciate you giving me a little bit of your time and attention each week. Thank you so much, and I'll see you in the next episode. Take care.