The Productivity Flywheel

Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Daily Dot, the daily version of the Connect the Dots podcast. It's January 4th, 2022, and I want to let you know before we get into the lesson that tomorrow I'm hosting a live webinar. That's Wednesday, January 5th at 3 PM Eastern, 12 PM Pacific. We'll go deep on each element of the Productivity Flywheel model that I'm going to describe for you today. So if this sounds interesting and you want to learn how to apply it to your goals, to your daily tasks, how to use it as a mental model for any kind of productive work that you want to do, definitely sign up. You'll also get my Most Productive Week Ever planner. You've heard me talk about Most Productive Week Ever. You've heard me talk about GAP and WRAP. This planner is what I use to have my productive weeks and to stack them on top of each other into productive quarters and productive years. All you have to do to sign up is just go to ProductivityPowerUp.com and you'll see the signup form for the webinar tomorrow. You'll also be able to learn more about the Productivity Power-Up cohort course that I'm starting on January 10th. So if you're interested in any of those things and how we can work together, make sure you go to ProductivityPowerUp.com and sign up. Now let's get into the productivity flywheel. I use this as a mental model or a filtering device for understanding how I can best design my work and how the different pieces of that work fits together. Let me explain. So there are 4 steps to the productivity flywheel: action, time, ideas, and tools. And they go in a pretty linear order. And if you want to see a visual example of this, check out the goals video that I just published on my YouTube channel. On yesterday, January 3rd. I think the name of the video is 3 Systems to Achieve Any Goal in 2022. So check out that video. There's a section dedicated to the Productivity Flywheel, and you can see the visual element of this, but it's very simple. Just think of a circle with 4 steps, yet creating a bit of a cycle. So the first one is action, and action is as you would think of it. Whenever you have something that you want to do, first you have to define what it is you need to do. So that can be top-level goals. It can also be associated actions or subtasks that go along with your ability to complete the goal, to achieve the goal. So it can also include things like, what habits do I need to develop? What routines do I need to have in place? So anything that has to do with action, with taking action, falls into the action category or bucket. After you've defined the action, now you need to protect the time. And so when you think of it in this light, it's very similar to how we've described the GAP method as well. The GAP method is actually just a condensed productivity model of the flywheel itself. Is then once I've defined the action, I need to understand like how much time do I need to protect? But this time step can also mean tracking your time. Categorizing it to understand, am I spending the right amount of time on the right things? The third step in the productivity flywheel is ideas and information. Because once I've defined the actions and I've protected the time that I have to do, I need to organize my ideas and information so that I can be efficient with the time that I've protected and effective in completing the tasks that I've set out for myself. So this can include things like Maybe it's note-taking, Zettelkasten, any kind of personal knowledge management, like building a second brain, that PARA framework you've heard me talk about from Tiago Forte. Because when you have properly organized ideas, it just makes everything else a lot smoother. And then the fourth step, and this is one that a lot of people start with or get stuck on, and those are the tools. Now, this is important to think about because Bullet Journaling is a tool. Note cards are a tool. Notion, Roam, Evernote, SuperNotes, a stopwatch is a tool, a timer, a clock, your iPhone is a tool. These are all things that should support the other 3 steps in the productivity flywheel. See, see what I'm going, see where I'm going with this? Because a lot of times we want to find the tool first and then fit our ideas or our time management or our actions to it. When in fact, if you don't have the discipline to define the tasks that need doing, to protect your time and to organize your ideas, it doesn't often matter what tool you're using. It's going to be really hard to be successful. But you can be really effective with defining your actions, with protecting your time and organizing your ideas, often with really simple tools like a Bullet Journal, like note cards. You can still be really productive and effective without finding the latest and greatest tool. So that's not to say they don't help. I use Notion. I use Roam. I know a lot of people use Evernote and, you know, a bunch of different tools. But when you go to select a tool, a good filtering device for tool selection is thinking about, is this tool that I'm considering using, or the function of this tool, does it help me define my actions and get things done? Does it help me protect my time and focus, protect my attention? Does it help me organize my ideas? And if you can't have an answer, if you don't have an answer to that question, to those filters, then the tool is not worth using, at least at this time. Okay. So I want to clarify that. So what the productivity flywheel allows you to do is define your actions, protect or track your time, organize your ideas, and select the right tool for the job. And when you go through this kind of 4-step cycle and you actually do the things, so then you do the actions, you reach the goal, you protect your time and attention, you have organized your ideas, you've selected the right tools for the job. I want you, this is where I want you to look at it like a cycle. And once you go through that cycle, then the next time you need to set a goal and define your actions, you should feel confidence that you've gone through this before. That has been a big source of confidence and encouragement for me over the years is to recognize that I've been through this loop literally hundreds of times. And so this should give you the expertise and the experience necessary to feel confident next time you're like, okay, well, if I want to achieve this goal, what do I have to do? Well, I can, you can say to yourself, I feel pretty confident about these things that I have to do because I've done them before. I have a pretty good estimate on how long this video, this goal, this project is going to take because I've been through this loop before because I've protected time necessary to do it before. So it's all a good, big, fun experiment, but this has been a really helpful mental model and filtering device for understanding the actions that I need to take, the time that I need to protect, how I should organize my ideas, and the right tools for the job. Okay. Thanks so much for listening to this slightly longer daily episode. I hope you've enjoyed it and make sure you go to productivitypowerup.com. Join me in the free webinar tomorrow, January 5th, 3:00 PM Eastern, 12:00 PM Pacific. And we'll dive into this in even more detail and we can use some of your examples, you know, things that you might be working on and show you how they fit into the flywheel. Okay. Thanks so much for listening and I'll hope to see you tomorrow. Bye.