Ramit Sethi argues that productivity hacks like GTD and Pomodoro don't stick. Instead, run two-week experiments to find what works for you, align tasks to your natural rhythms, and pick three major goals to filter out everything else.
Isn't it interesting that I could give you a series of tactics right now and you would feel great, yet two weeks from now, your productivity would be measurably at the exact same place it is now. The fact of the matter is, is that if it were simply a tactical issue, then you would have already done it. You would have read a book like Getting Things Done gtd, or you would have used the Pomodoro technique or. Or a variety of other techniques that have been tried to be implemented by millions of people. The fact is, it's not simply a tactical issue. There's far more going on in our minds when it comes to productivity. So I'm going to suggest three principles that you can use to double your productivity. Now remember, first of all, it's possible because there are people who are way more productive than either of us and they do a massive amount of work in the same amount of time as we have. So how do they do it? I'm going to suggest a framework for how you can get to that level of productivity as well. We all have the same amount of hours in the day, so how do we massively increase our productivity? The first thing is testing. So I could give you a tactic right now. I could say GTD is great and GTD is a very good system. What I have found to be highly productive is understanding different systems and then testing them rigorously. So for example, one of the things I used to test was how to wake up earlier. Recently, I've been testing how to take shorter and shorter naps. And it's very simple. I basically say, okay, this is what I'm going to test for the next X time period. I always set it short time period, maybe just two weeks. And I'm going to try it for two weeks or for two weeks I'm going to work on my desk versus in my bed. And I'm always running a series of tests. What this does is instead of focusing at the tactical level, it lets you take it one step above. In other words, you can say, all right, I have all these series of tactics, but instead of just choosing one and guessing that it's going to work, I'm going to use an umbrella strategy that says for two weeks, I'm going to test this for two weeks, I'm going to test that. And you will be far more productive when you find a tactic that works. Notice what I said? A tactic that works versus just a tactic you think will work. So that's number one. Number two, be brutally honest with yourself. How many of us love to say, I'm going to do that in the morning. And then we wake up in the morning and we are horribly unproductive. Okay. Personally, I'm a morning guy. If I say to myself, like, oh, I need to do some more writing tonight, let me do it after I have dinner, I can't write. I cannot write after about 5pm I just do not have it in my head. So I know that there's no point in promising myself that I'm going to do it. I'm not. Go to sleep, wake up in the morning and I'll be much better. But how many of us go through our entire lives basically lying to ourselves, refusing to acknowledge the way we actually are? Instead, we say things like, yeah, I really should wake up earlier. Why? If you're not a morning person, focus your productivity where you are. So being brutally honest requires us to often acknowledge things that we don't like. But I live in a world of what is rather than what should be. So I would say be brutally honest with yourself about are you more productive working at a coffee shop or your office or home? Are you more productive in the morning or at night? Are you more productive? Xyz Be brutally honest. And the way you can do that, of course, is what I talked about in the last point, testing. If you test it, you write it down, you look at the data. No real arguing there. The third and final point, rather than giving you tactic after tactic, is another framework, and that is to have a clear guideline for what's important. So one of the techniques that I teach people is when they go into their new job, for the first 90 days, 30, 60 and 90 days, they want to pick three things that they really want to execute on. So let's say you work at a startup, your goals might be new users, engagement and revenue. Okay, you could spend all day answering emails and doing all these tasks that are thrown at you, but at the end of 90 days, what's going to matter? It's going to be those three pillars, new users, engagement and revenue. So like I said, you could spend all day, but you're going to be measured on those major important things. So what are the three things for you that matter? If you're running your own business, it's probably revenue. If you're running a project for work, it's probably going to be, you know, how much time did you save, how much money did you save, how many customers did you get? That's what matters. And once you pick those three strategies under that, you can focus on what's going to drive that number up the most. What you will also notice is that as people start giving you tasks and you start getting emails, you try to map that to one of those pillars. If it doesn't fit, you may still have to do it, but you know to deprioritize it. Because again, at the end of 90 days, yeah, you could spend all day answering emails, but you're going to be measured on those three pillars. So take those three testing, being brutally honest with yourself, and clear guidelines for what matters. Those frameworks operate at this level, as opposed to simple tactical solutions that may give you a temporary feeling of productivity, but won't last in the long term. Think strategically. Don't simply think tactically.
