Here are six principles I strive to live by. This is my own “personal productivity manifesto”: it summarizes what works for me about personal productivity.
Whenever I follow these guidelines, I am at my very best, feeling productive and joyful. If I feel that I am doing things outside these guidelines, I know I can refer to them and quickly get back on track.
Since these principles work so well for me, I figured they might work for you, too. Here they are:
Principle 6: Devote Time
No matter how capable or gifted we may be, it’s an illusion to think we can do it all. As my favorite productivity adage goes, we can do anything, but not everything. At every moment, we’re presented with infinite possibilities — we really could be doing anything! But freedom to do whatever we set our sights on comes at a price, and the price is that we need to constantly make choices about what really matters to us.
These choices, at the most fundamental level, always boil down to how we allocate and spend our time. The value of our achievements is primarily determined by what we consistently invest our time in. We need to be aware of that every day, diligently investing the time in what matters and having the courage to let the unimportant stuff go.
How to Apply this Principle
- Use a time budget. In a time budget you define shares of time for the areas or goals you care about. It’s just like a money budget, but for time: it guarantees that you don’t overspend on things that don’t matter, so you can make the most out of the things that do.
To learn more about setting up a time budget, check out Time Budget: An Easy Way to Avoid Prioritization Dilemmas and Keep Your Life Balanced.
Principle 5: Focus Your Attention
If the previous principle was about allocating time for the things that matter, this one is about how well you’re able to spend that time.
Very often it seems we just can’t concentrate, even though we know what we should be doing, right? Resistance, procrastination, allowing ourselves to get sidetracked by distractions: these are formidable obstacles even for the most resolute people. Developing a strategy for overcoming resistance and dealing with distractions, then, is essential for maximum productivity.
How to Apply this Principle
- Use time boxing. Time boxing is a technique I use every day to overcome procrastination, conquer perfectionism and maximize overall efficiency. The concept is really simple: delimit blocks of time to work on tasks. But don’t let the simplicity of the concept deceive you: you really got to try it to see how effective it is in overcoming resistance, focusing your attention and actually doing what needs to get done.
To learn more about time boxing, check out 15 Time Boxing Strategies to Get Things Done.
Principle 4: Honor Thy Commitments
Personal productivity is not about cramming as much stuff as we possibly can in our days. Here is a situation that sometimes happens to me, and I am sure it must have happened to you too: in a given day we write down a gazillion tasks to do, cross a lot of them off but, at the end of the day, still feel anxious about the tasks we didn’t do. Why is that?
The feeling of being productive comes not from the quantity of tasks we do, but from honoring the commitments we set for ourselves. Doing what we said we would do is what we should primarily strive for. Tasks that keep being left undone in our to do lists are broken promises to ourselves, and are a sure recipe for frustration: no matter how much we do in our days, we’ll always look at them and feel bad about ourselves.
Before trying to get more stuff done, make sure you honor your current promises (to yourself and to others): Be clear about them, drop those that you know you won’t be able to honor and then ensure that you really complete the ones that remain.
How to Apply this Principle
- Use will-do lists. ‘Will do’ lists replace a bunch of intentions (the traditional to do’s) with a small set of commitments. It’s not only much shorter than a to-do list, but also doesn’t grow as your day progresses — and you feel just terrific when you cross off 100% of it day after day.
To learn more about ‘will do’ lists, check out Overwhelmed by Your To-Do List? Go With a ‘Will-Do’ List Instead.
Principle 3: Develop a Sustainable Pace
We need to strike a balance between work and play — between engagement and rest, between creation and recreation. In the productivity game we should take our leisure time as seriously as our work time. Even if we feel energetic and motivated to work long hours, the most effective long-term strategy is to hold ourselves back when feeling too enthusiastic and follow a sustainable pace instead.
Also, defining clear boundaries between work and rest is very important: “Work when you’re working, rest when you’re resting”, I often say. Whenever I forget this, I end up in a very ineffective ‘not-quite-working/not-quite-resting’ zombie-like state.
How to Apply this Principle
The two tools I use for the previous principles also work wonders here:
Will-do lists. As soon as I’m done with the will-do list for the day, I’m done: I must resist the urge to work longer. I admit that sometimes — especially when I’m feeling highly energetic — I still stretch and go “get the most out of the day”. However, I always regret it the day after, as I can’t sustain the pace for too long and end up much worse than if I had just stopped working at the right time instead.
Time boxes. also help keep work activities together. That helps a lot in making the boundaries between work and recreation very clear.
Principle 2: Keep Moving On
More important than setting big goals is to just keep going. I know this goes against most of the “set bold goals for yourself” advice you see everywhere, but it’s what works for me. Going after a “big vision” is something that always felt awkward, and it always made me more anxious than it helped.
Now, what does work for me is to constantly think about how to improve my life and define little steps to make it happen. Think continuous improvement. Take small steps and see how things change. Experiment. Sure, it’s perfectly fine to have a general direction, but don’t get too obsessed about it: circumstances will change — you will change. It’s in each step that you learn and adjust your direction.
How to Apply this Principle
Daily and Weekly Reviews. Assess your projects and tasks every day and make sure that you define next steps for all your projects. Make them small, but ensure you make progress every single day. Forget New Year’s Resolutions. Plan, review and adjust your steps every day and every week.
Ask “How can I take a step so small that it is impossible to fail?” This is one of my favorite questions ever (I got it from the book One Small Step Can Change Your Life — summary here). I ask it every single day when reviewing my projects and task lists. It melts resistance away and, when asked frequently, keeps you on track and energetic to keep going.
Principle 1: Feel Good. Now.
“Being productive” only makes sense if you’re enjoying yourself as you work on the stuff that’s relevant. If you’re not, none of the things we discussed here really matters. Personal productivity is a state of mind: a feeling that you’re doing what you believe is important and that you’re happy about it — not that you’re making sacrifices day in, day out.
For me, a good rule of thumb is that we should feel tired at the end of the day. Yes, tired, but in a good way: that’s very different from feeling spent or drained: it’s feeling that we poured our energy into the stuff we care the most. The feeling that our energy was put to good use. Going to sleep looking forward to the next day is, in my opinion, the ultimate measure of personal productivity.
How to Apply this Principle
- Take a one-minute self-assessment at the end of the day. How was your day? Did you invest your time and energy doing what really matters? Forget for a minute about your goals, focus on your journey. After all, if you’re only making sacrifices and not enjoying your days, what’s the point of being productive?
What about You?
What do you think of these principles? Anything missing? Do you have your own productivity principles? Please share in the comments! I’m eager to know about what works for you!
Wonderful.
It is not that important how much you do, but much more important what you do. A few things, done well and picked right, have more impact than crazy, hectic action.
I am a ’strategist’, online strategist, and sometimes people don’t even get the idea behind working with strategies. Your excellent post does not only describe personal productivity, but how a team or project can be productive and successful, too.
I miss the ‘challenge yourself every day’ position in this a bit although I fully agree with all your items on this list.
Your reminder about strategy is a very important one.
For me, the most challenging aspect of ’strategy’ is to find ways to do it incrementally (see point #2: Keep Moving On). For me, strategy is not something you ’set’ (in stone), but something you ‘develop’ (over time). Does that make sense?
Oh yes, I totally agree, a strategy is not set in stone but needs to be monitored, held against progress and changing environment. But the most essential element of a strategy is to have one!-)
It should be written down, and be re-evaluated regularly.
What do you think about the ‘challenge yourself regularly’ item? If you never fail, may be you did not set your goals high enough. That might not be an everyday principle, still I think this element is important.
Challenging yourself regularly is indeed a great productivity principle!
Looking in retrospect, the likely reason I omitted it from the list is because I don’t even notice anymore: keeping up with the six productivity principles — day in, day out — is already a huge daily challenge in itself!
Thanks for the contribution, Andreas!
My most useful advice for productivity is to ask myself: Do I want to do this? If not what can I do about that? If nothing: how can I make this as enjoyable as possible?
Evan, I like the way you distill your approach in just a small number of questions. Thanks for sharing!
Excellent post! I love these principles — especially #1!
Great article, Principle 2 is the most relevant for me right now. I struggle keeping up w/ the day to days on my goals.
Tom,
“Keep Moving On” is a topic I plan to expand in a future article, as I think there’s still a lot to be said in that regard. I believe that a lot of the goal setting advice around does more harm than good — like causing more procrastination and anxiety. Small steps gracefully fix many of these problems.
Stay tuned!
Hey Luciano.
This is a cool set of principles to follow. Number 4 is the one I can use work on, as I often find myself either missing my own deadlines, or doing the same with deadlines others have made. I am pretty good with #2 about continuing to move on, but sometimes get derailed as well.
I am working on these aspects. These principles are harder to keep up with than they seem at first glance.
I like the point about how you see what you can do at the current time to improve in some way, and focus on that instead of getting caught up in a large whirlwind of disappointment/inaction. There’s no point in looking at past failures instead of opportunities.
Thanks for putting this out there.
Hi Armen, thanks for stopping by!
“These principles are harder to keep up with than they seem at first glance.”
They really are — I get derailed all the time! Actually, the main reason I summarized these principles in one single place was so I could easily refer to them when something feels wrong (and that’s often!).
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Fantastic, Luciano. Even though it’s impossible for me to time budget (since I take too long on certain tasks and get totally derailed) on a daily basis, I just set weekly “to-do” goals in a general area. Hence, I don’t allocate 30 minutes for meditation, say, in a day – I give myself 210 minutes per week, and I get to 210 as I please. For projects, I often do the same, telling myself to do 9 hours of work on it over 3 days, and budget it with total freedom.
I’m glad you put feeling good as number 1, because that’s really what we’re chasing here: we just want to feel good.
Getting derailed and taking too long on certain tasks is the exact reason I use a time budget!
It allows me to corral those tasks so they don’t overflow to the rest of my day.
Actually, that not only is a time budget, but a fantastic way of doing it! A weekly budget is much more realistic and flexible than a daily one — and I highly recommend doing it day way! Thanks for bringing that up!
Thanks for this post. I really enjoyed what you said about not trying to do it all. This can be very tempting to some people. However, I find that it is far more rewarding to do less things very well rather than being mediocre (or worse) at a lot.
Hi Luciano. You can’t imagine how much I needed this article! I am most definitely having productivity issues right now and this has been a considerable help. It’s so easy to suffer ‘overwhelm’ while working on the web, but I can see how boxing out my time will push me forward. Thanks.
Hope it helps, Patricia. Of all the productivity techniques listed above, time boxing is certainly the one that gives results more rapidly: it’s a great place to start.
I really like the distinction you make between the will-do and to-do list. Very helpful… I’m going to start thinking differently about my task roster! Great post and thanks for being transparent and revealing about your own life.
Will-do lists are liberating — I just love them!
The idea came from Mark Forster in his excellent book Do It Tomorrow — highly recommended!
This is a great manifesto Luciano. I love principle 4 as it’s the one I most identify with and the one I always stick to. The others I am not so good at but getting better all the time. Thanks for this.
Great overview of your methods. I will check out the articles mentioned in here as well. What I personally struggle with is to find a practical system and use it consistently. I switch constantly for my calendar and to-do list stuff, from different paper to different electronic solutions. I would like to find a good method for this, since between all this switching things and time gets lost. What applications and/or paper tools do you use? And what do you recommend for calendar, task lists and notes and projects?
Hi Paulien,
This is probably the subject for a whole article but, in short, here’s what I use:
Paper: For creativity-related activities, as a temporary medium. Big sheets of paper (A3) for mind mapping and a Moleskine for everyday idea capturing and doodling.
For project materials, I keep a computer mind map for each project.
For tasks lists (will do lists, master list, someday/maybe — everything), as well as calendar, I use the excellent app MyLife Organized (couldn’t recommend it more!).
I know this is a brief explanation, but hope it helps a little bit! Maybe it would be a good idea to write an article laying out my full system (and inviting people to share theirs).
Thank you for sharing. I will definitely check out that program. And a full post about this would be great, as I feel that without a good system these principles cannot be used as fully as they should. Hope to read more about this soon!
Hi Luciano,
I’m thrilled to read your new post.
I’m at a place where I UNDERSTAND I should be using these principles right now but I find myself thinking, analyzing and agreeing a lot and actually doing little…
But this post is a productivity booster, I’ll tell ya
Thanks for sharing!
Alex
Alex,
Laying out the principles, practices and tools for our productivity systems is just the beginning, right? We both know that it’s in the daily practice that things really happen… A small set of principles can definitely make a good guide, but you still need to take action day in, day out — and that’s usually not as neat or elegant as 6 bullet points…
It would be great before we close our eyes at night if we feel that we poured our energy into the stuff we care the most and our energy was put to good use.looking forward to the next day is indeed a perfect habit!
First, I’d like to thank you to pairing this down to 6 principles. I tend to tune it out when I see “701 tricks to improve your life”, so picking the best and brightest is greatly appreciated.
Second, thanks for putting both the principles and the applications. This should be the template for more self-improvement blog posts!
Regarding the content, I don’t use any of these techniques (although I should). In fact, my reading your post and writing this comment are symptoms of the problem! If I could do two of them consistently I’m sure it would pay huge dividends in my life. I’ll try out a “will do list” & “time boxes”.
Thanks.
Hi Derek, glad you appreciate there are just a few principles. The first draft of my “productivity manifesto” had 15 principles… when I realized I couldn’t remember them all by heart I instantly knew there was something wrong…
If you try any of the techniques, I’d really appreciate if you came back here to report how it worked for you. And if you have any doubts about any of them just let me know!
I think this is one of the most comprehensive, focused, well-stated set of principles. They are excellent — in combination. They are presented in a manner that states what they are, what we need to do and how to do it in a direct fashion. Easy to understand, challenging to apply. Wish more people could see this. Excellent. Many thanks. R.
You’re right Rudy: the principles (and their companion tools) make a lot more sense when in combination.
My experience is that they fit very well together, and sometimes feel as just one thing. Time boxes and time budget are naturally complimentary. Will do lists also integrate well in the bunch, as for me the daily time blocks are also items in my will do list.
Your ideas on productivity principles are right on the money. I especially like your tip “Keep Moving On” – to constantly think about how to improve your life. I’ll give your advice a try. If these work for you, I think it can work for me too. Thanks for sharing it!
Luciano, terrific post on productivity. I liked ” constantly think about how to improve my life and define little steps to make it happen”
Its those little steps that cause us to look back and see giant ones
I agree that developing the ability to hold our attention is such an important and overlooked aspect of productivity. One interesting thing is that spiritual practices that have been around for thousands of years can help us do this — a Zen meditation, for instance, that has us practice holding attention on our breathing and gently return our attention to the breath when our minds start to wander off.
Very good point, Chris. Although I don’t meditate (it’s in my “to-do list” — no, this is not a joke!), it’s clear by the way you describe it that meditation works as a great practice for focusing. That would be another great tool supporting Principle #5… Thanks for bringing that up!
Great post
i do agree and i believe focusing is one of the most important elements in time management
Hey Luciano,
I’m not sure why I haven’t been here in a while, but I think I”m gonna hang out and stay
. As I think about more and more turning my blogging efforts into a business, posts like this are going to become invaluable to my ability to really grow. I think if you can be committed to implementing this kind of system and actually following through, it could be really valuable.
Thanks, Srinivas — you’re very welcome to stay!
If you end up adopting one or more of these principles in growing your business, I’d be very interested in knowing how they work for you.
Luciano,
I’m in the process of launching my second blog and it will be my very first multi-author blog that I’m doing in partnership with some others so this kind of information will really come in handy. I plan on reading through this post a few more times. Now that I have a full time job, I’m forced to be a thousand times more efficient with all work I’m doing on my blog.
Hi Luciano,
Awesome and brilliant! This article summarizes all the tools that explained in earlier articles. Anybody should start from this principles, and use the tools in a more structured way. Can’t wait to implement this principles in my own life. Thanks.
Hi Yose,
Thanks for the compliments! The way I came up with these principles was from the bottom-up: I started using the tools, and after realizing how well they worked, worked up figuring out why, and only then came up with the general principles. (I am a big fan of bottom-up approaches!)
Very nice distillation.
The interesting thing about keep moving on is it keeps you from ruminating which can be a downward spiral. I’m a fan of the sustainable pace.
Hi J.D.,
Honored to have you here — love your blog!
Agile concepts — such as constant reviews, sustainable pace and so many others — are a vast source of inspiration for ways to increase our productivity, aren’t they?
Actually, right now I am adapting and test driving many eXtreme Programming concepts in my own life — and getting excellent results! Depending on how that turns out, I’ll refine the manifesto
Brilliant! i also prioritize things that I need to do. This helps me get the important things done first.
thank you
Debbie
With 2 young kids, I take one hour at the time, as some days are better and most are not with infant waking, sickness and tantrum all around. Good tips for others who may have somewhat normal routine, something to look forward to.