I read dozens of productivity books and articles. And as boring as it may sound, it boils down to only two simple yet profound concepts:
- Focus on your ONE thing.
- Block all your distractions.
Focus on your ONE thing
Either the night before or early in the morning, you write down the most important thing you must do. You might say, “I’ve got so much on my plate, how can I choose only one?“. I hear you, and the answer to this is to ask yourself the following question: “What’s the ONE Thing I can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?” (coming straight from The ONE Thing book by Gary Keller). In other words, if I can do only one thing today and go to bed with a smile on my face, what would it be?
Then, you write it down on a piece of paper and put it in front of you for the rest of the day. No fancy productivity app — pen and paper. That’s it. I use 4x6 index cards:
You’ll notice I have 3 todos on my list. Jim Collins put it this way, “If you have more than three priorities, you have no priorities”. So, your first priority is your ONE thing. Great. Next is to figure out what else is important but not as important as my one thing. To help you with the decision - “what should I do next?”, you can ask yourself again the question “What’s the ONE Thing…“. It’s not a magic question; it’s just a tool to help you find your north star.
Block all your distractions
To apply the first concept, you have to remove what’s holding you back. What’s holding you back? Of course, distractions. Don’t try to fight it, you’ll never win. Your job is to make it so hard to be distracted that you’d have no choice but to stay focused.
Addicted to your phone? Put your phone on silent and leave it in the other room while working on your big 3 priorities. Can’t stop checking your inbox? Block your email app. On my mac, I’m using an app called Cold Turkey Blocker to block apps and websites that yank me out of focus. Cold Turkey Blocker is super handy and a neat solution to distractions on your machine. I started using it 9 years ago and have never let a distraction pull me back (I mean, we all go off track here and there — but you get the point).
You’d want to punch me through the screen, yet this cliche is so true that I have to repeat it:
Focus on less to achieve more
I know, I know, it’s ridiculous. But the recipe for productivity and success is not a sexy formula. Quite the opposite, it’s the ordinary things you’ll execute very well daily. People neglect it because it’s so simple, and they’re damn sure it must be more hacky and complicated. Look at the industry, every few months, a new productivity book is released that conveys the exact same (simple) message but in other words (more fancy, of course). On top of that, they all have to come up with some clever formula, e.g., D.A.M.N., to make it sound like a bulletproof system.
If you need a routine to serve as a starting point, here’s mine. Use it as inspiration, not as a strict rule.
- 4:45 a.m.: wake up, bathroom & drink a glass of water
- 5:00 a.m.: hit the gym
- 6:15 a.m.: smoothie & shower
- 7:30 a.m.: reading a book / praying
- 8:00 a.m.: focus time 1
(5 min break at 9:00, 10:00, 11:00 for water & movement)
- 12:00 p.m.: lunch
- 12:45 p.m.: check inbox & answer emails
- 2:00 p.m.: focus time 2
(5 min break at 3:00, 4:00, 5:00 for water & movement)
- 5:30 p.m.: play with my kids
- 7:00 p.m.: light work
- 9:00 p.m.: wind down & prepare for bed
- 10:00 p.m.: sleep
There’s no perfect day. No matter how hard you try, there will always be something incomplete - unwashed car, unread emails, and so on. Just accept it and move on. I have severe ADHD and struggle to cope with undone tasks. So, for my own peace of mind, I created a “Maintenance Day”. Every two weeks or once a month, I schedule one. Have “unimportant” tasks that must be done? No problem, add them to a Maintenance List. Then, on your Maintenance Day, you take a half or full day off and clear that list. This frees up mental bandwidth and helps you stay at peace with yourself.
Task feels too overwhelming? Go outdoors for a 10 min walk. Overloaded schedule? So don’t let your mouth overload your back. Say “NO” more often. Don’t be polite and say “maybe”. Simply say “No”. If you prefer the semi-polite answer, you can also say, “No. But if anything changes, I’ll let you know”.
A note on Maintenance List
Someone asked me once, “What are the tasks in the Maintenance list? Can you give me examples?”
The way I see it, the Maintenance List is for all the annoying “stuff” that clutters your mind but isn’t important enough to be your ONE Thing for the day. These are the tasks that don’t require deep focus, but they create a low-level anxiety because you know they need to get done eventually.
It’s not a list for procrastinating on big projects; it’s a dedicated bucket for low-impact tasks.
My actual list is just a raw list of tasks that looks something like this:
- Book dentist appointment
- Pay city water bill
- Unsubscribe from junk emails
- Return Amazon package
- Wash the car
- Fix wobbly kitchen chair
- Clean the balcony
The whole point is to take all these little “open loops” out of your head and put them in one place. That way, they’re not stealing tiny bits of your focus during the week when you should be working on your big priorities. Then, on Maintenance Day, you just put on some music/podcast and crush the whole list. It frees up a huge amount of mental bandwidth.
Don’t stress about falling off the wagon. Happens to all of us. The key is not to let yourself stay down. Get yourself up and ride on.
Keep doing the boring stuff extremely well, and you’ll be fine.