Pt 1: Private Productiveness Stack

Over the previous few months I’ve had a number of pals ask me about my productiveness stack in numerous shapes and varieties. Somewhat than repeating it with half the articulation I might wish to, I assumed why not create an article about it!

I like to maximise probably the most I can out of my restricted lifetime. Whereas most individuals assume you may’t have all of it, I consider you may — supplied you intend successfully and guarantee appropriate sequencing of operations for effectivity.

As well as, man can be a primitive being with out his instruments. Most individuals make use of near 0 software program for the non-public growth stack. That is nearly as good as being a cave-man, within the data age. If you happen to really feel just like the issues beneath are “too many instruments” then you may be restricted in your output.

The rationale why I selected these techniques was based mostly on the next truths:

1. Our mind has weak storage and powerful compute talents. When we now have an excessive amount of to recollect, we really feel confused.

2. As we undergo life and expertise issues, we’re typically restricted in our skill to successfully motion our ideas to the Subsequent Greatest Smallest Motion (tm lol).

3. Software program that may precisely map our psychological state means we are able to look at ourselves from a novel perspective.

As soon as I recognized these truths from my lived expertise, the following half was experimenting to search out what labored. The beneath is probably the most MVP model of my private productiveness stack that I believe will get somebody in form. There are lots of extra ranges to this that I intentionally don’t present to keep away from overwhelming you.

To resolve these issues I realised there have been a couple of rules that have been essential to me to respect.

1. Reside by the system like your life is dependent upon it: if you cannot totally belief your system then it will not totally have the ability to help you.

2. Implement the minimal quantity of construction doable: do not create pointless busy work for your self and optimise for issues which are versatile to accomodate to your non-linear mind.

3. Bake in freedom to comply with what your coronary heart seems like doing: I hate feeling like I am a slave to my techniques. These instruments are right here to help me however I select what I really feel like doing and when. Individuals who timebox their total days by way of a calendar sound like NPCs (or they’re mendacity)

Okay now that you have understood the context and why that is all essential. Let’s get into the precise substance of it.

Most individuals use Apple Notes to put in writing down issues that they should bear in mind or come throughout. All of them declare to defend that their system works. Once I ask them in the event that they’ve actioned all of the issues they’ve written in it they typically do not even know what they have been meant to do a month in the past. Utilizing Apple Notes is a rookie mistake and do not fall for the lure of One Huge Word. I will let you know why it does not work:

1. Your ideas should not in a modular type since you hold including many atomic ideas to the identical observe so a single observe has many sub-thoughts encapsulated in it that makes it laborious to interrupt down.

2. As a way to motion every thought, you must manually copy paste textual content or open another app to manually copy data over from Apple Notes to your vacation spot supply.

Enter in Drafts: the optimum strategy to course of your ideas. The best way I give it some thought is: think about your mind as a strong machine that powers your organic existence for survival and copy. As a way to optimise this machine we should be in a position instrument it successfully. Now till we get thought studying EEG sensors that observe the whole lot we expect, your finest guess is manually writing something that is vital down. When the thought comes you wish to guarantee:

1. You possibly can have the shortest doable time to enter the thought into some digital system

2. Write the least doable down to make sure you will get again to the precise second/proceed your stream of consciousness

3. Apply minimal vitality to have the ability to course of that thought into the Subsequent Greatest Smallest Motion.

What is the take care of this Subsequent Greatest Smallest Motion factor Kerman?. Nice query, let me clarify. Basically every thought has a supply (your mind) and a vacation spot to use motion. It is type of like f(x) -> y, the place x is your thought and the operate f(x) is what occurs in-between to get to y. What occurs in between to remodel x to y could be very complicated or drawn our course of. To make this much less summary let’s use a couple of instance ideas:

• You name a buddy and determine to get lunch and decide to a sure time however want to determine the place. You are on the run so you do not wish to create a full calendar entry both. You write down “lunch bob tue 12pm”.

• A buyer you are working with requests a characteristic that you simply assume can be cool to debate however you wish to present extra context earlier than sharing it to the group. “Secondary desk sorting” you write as a reminder to your self.

• Sooner or later you are strolling within the streets and see somebody play the violin and it reminds you of your lengthy misplaced dream to play an instrument, however you are still undecided which one and must see the way it stacks together with your different objectives and time commitments. You enter “be taught violin or some instrument”

• You are going for a stroll after which consider the very best thought for a weblog submit so that you seize “pondering of productiveness like software program dev stack content material”.

All of those might be easy todos however you are going to begin having an inventory that appears like:

• “lunch bob tue 12pm”

• “secondary desk sorting”

• “be taught violin or some instrument”

• “pondering of productiveness like software program dev stack content material”

Now you are sitting Monday morning at your desk taking a look at your todo record making an attempt to determine what you might want to and when and also you’re completely confused given the sparse particulars, a number of hidden steps baked into every process and lack of prioritisation/ordering. That is the loss of life of ideas and actionability. Not all ideas are todos and a few ideas require enrichment earlier than being created.

So what we now have now is a matter the place the whole lot is captured in Drafts (hopefully) however we have to be certain that these ideas can attain a state of including worth to our life. We will take a fast pause from Drafts and now discuss concerning the vacation spot sources that our ideas can transfer to and ultimately speak about how Drafts helps join the dots.

Some folks use their calendars to todo lists. I believe that is the fallacious use of a device. A calendar ought to ONLY be used to let you know the place you might want to be and when. Something that’s in your calendar is legislation and marks your commitments and energy of phrase. That is an instance of a system you wish to implement the least quantity of construction in. Do not put blocks for exercising, consuming, random todo objects and so forth. You wish to have the least dedicated doable calendar to maximise the belongings you really wish to do or really feel like doing in every second.

It is essential that you simply respect this technique as a result of with out time the whole lot cancels to 0. An overloaded calendar does not provide the alternative to really feel like you might have time/house to assume. An inaccurate calendar is a landmine of damaged guarantees ready to occur. Your calendar is your legislation and ought to be the truest state of actuality. For instance, I will not add going to the health club in my calendar, however I’ll add my private coaching health club session. I will not add time to eat, however I’ll add lunch with a buddy. There’s nearly nothing on the calendar that does not pertain to another person. It’s a mark of your exterior commitments, not inside ones.

Notion Calendar is a superb selection given multi-timezone help and the native integration with Notion, which I cowl beneath.

I believe majority of my readers use or are conversant in Notion. Nonetheless in case you’re not then you might want to be ASAP. Notion is a really distinctive piece of software program that allows you to symbolize data in a extremely versatile and related means. For instance, you may create a database referred to as “Objectives” that then has a property that may hyperlink to objects in one other database (Milestones). I will not spent an excessive amount of time going into why Notion is exclusive or the best way to use it, that is impartial analysis you might want to do. Nonetheless the way in which that I take advantage of Notion is to create digital representations of my life for issues comparable to:

• Objectives: what do I wish to obtain at present

• Milestones: what are the quantified objects to mark success in my objectives

• Health objectives: numeric measurements expressed as a share of my physique composition

• Bucket record: what are all of the issues I wish to do earlier than dying and what standing of dedication are they at

As you may see they’re wealthy data buildings that may be intertwined with one another.

I’ve tried nearly each todo record below the solar and there is one motive why Todoist is a lower above: the programmatic energy it has internally and externally. I will clarify extra about it beneath however I can nearly assure there will not be a greater device that Todoist in relation to a private productiveness stack, beginning with API help. That is essential when coping with drafts.

Now let’s speak about the best way to use a todo record. The most important mistake that folks make with todo lists is that they assign due dates to most/all duties that ultimately get missed then make them really feel responsible and promote unfavourable self discuss of being lazy. This is my key rules for utilizing a todo record:

1. Nothing ought to have a due date to it except one thing dangerous occurs by not doing it on that date. Examples embrace: monetary penalties, misplaced alternatives and significant commitments. The variety of issues with due dates ought to be minimal.

2. Duties are merely ordered with 3 easy priorities. Pink means “do ASAP each time you might have free time”. Orange is extra of “you might want to do that however you may take a little bit of time”. Blue is “yeah do it everytime you’re bored or do not wish to do an orange/purple”. This straightforward system retains prioritisation straightforward.

3. Every todo merchandise ought to be completely clear what the following step is and require 0 pondering. If you cannot do it in a single step then it is a dangerous one.

4. Create a mission referred to as “someday” the place you dump all of the belongings you’d wish to ultimately do.

Now, when you might have free time you merely: test what are the completely crucial issues you might want to do which are due at the moment. Then, when you have free time begin going by your site visitors mild of reds, oranges, blues.

Okay so now that we have type of explored the most important vacation spot sources for ideas (there’s many extra however these are simply key ones I believe everybody ought to have), we are able to now come again to Drafts. One factor that’s particular about all of the software program on this weblog submit is that they’ve robust APIs that make interconnection between them very seamless. So bear in mind how we had all these particular person ideas in Drafts:

• “lunch bob tue 12pm”

• “secondary desk sorting”

• “be taught violin or some instrument”

• “pondering of productiveness like software program dev stack content material”

We will now, contained in the Drafts app, apply programmatic actions to every of our modular ideas. So going by the record:

• “lunch bob tue 12pm”: Apply Todoist motion -> Triggers modal in Drafts with fields for title and precedence. You enter “Discover place for lunch with Bob subsequent Tue @ 12pm” and orange precedence as a result of you realize you may in all probability get round to it quickly -> Enriched todo merchandise is now in Todoist with out leaving Drafts. You additionally rapidly add in your calendar “[TBD] Lunch with Bob” so you do not double e book.

• “secondary desk sorting”: This requires you to first perform a little research then current to the group -> You create a web page in Notion including your key ideas in a extra fleshed out means -> Create an orange Todoist merchandise that talks about ending off the doc after which sharing with the group, you embrace the hyperlink to the newly created Notion doc within the description to present your self a pleasant place to select off subsequent time.

• “be taught violin or some instrument”: Given this can be a aim of yours, you merely go to Notion after which add it as “Not Began” and “Analysis an instrument to be taught, ideally violin”. You can automate this by creation a Notion Objectives motion which might mechanically add it to Notion from Drafts!

• “pondering of productiveness like software program dev stack content material”: Your re-write this thought as: “Private Productiveness Stack (new line) Speak about how one can consider your productiveness as a software program growth stack and the way it all hyperlinks collectively”. This thought can now have the Notion Content material Concept motion utilized which is able to take the primary line and add that because the title of the Notion DB row and the contents of the web page because the second line of textual content.

As you may see with the entire above examples, you’d undergo this train usually day-after-day or two and enrich every thought with the correct quantity of data to make it possible for the NBSA to occur. All of your Draft actions could be completed by present plugins from the group or your individual hand rolled JavaScript powered by ChatGPT! As your motion library grows or will get refined, processing your ideas ought to take much less and fewer time!

Whereas this could be a new system to get used to and time to actively administration, the outcome means:

1. You seize each thought that’s vital sufficient to alter your life for the higher

2. Every thought will ultimately discover it is place to be efficient on this planet

3. Your calendar ought to solely replicate your exterior commitments

4. Your todo record tells you what’s crucial to do at the moment and what can be good to do when you have extra time

5. You possibly can reside every second based mostly in your temper, vitality and needs

I have been in a position to considerably enhance the standard of my life with this technique and hope it might do the identical for a lot of extra. This can be a very tough template and you’ll have to make investments the time to tweak it to your preferences and workflows however that is the value of being efficient. Earlier than utilizing the instruments one of the simplest ways to method that is only a piece of pen and paper to map the whole lot out and seeing how your data structure would circulate.

In any case, that is it for this submit! Be part of the Telegram channel when you have any questions concerning the system 🙂 With this I hope you are actually empowered to:

• Do fascinating issues and lead a satisfying life you get pleasure from

• Document your ideas as you acquire entropy

• Discover the following finest motion to progress your ideas with

• Reap the advantages of being to do lots directly!