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Thoughts on productivity

3 min read

Productivity

What is Productivity?

One of the recent examples that I have seen about productivity is tied with one’s goals. Productivity is what move you towards your goal faster. This inherently assumes that you have goals in life, and you are clear about your goals.

Now one of the common pitfall that I often fall into, is that I make the productivity system a goal onto itself. Well I have many pitfalls that I should list down here just to recognize what are the issues with them.

  1. I take too many tasks relative to the time that I have
  2. I spend my time in less priority things
  3. I spend too much time optimizing, in fact so much time that minority goes into actually finishing the work.
  4. I have a shiny object syndrome

Things I think I need to do:

  1. Simplify my life:
    • How would one do that?
      • Start finishing major things, remove the unimportant from the life
      • Simplify the activities which takes time
      • Priorities things that are important
      • Identify and clarify the goals that I want

My short term goals:

  1. Finish the ancillary market report in the office
    1. Work at the office dedicatedly on this
  2. Finish the off-grid report
    1. Work at the office
  3. Finish my thesis
    1. Find time in the morning
  4. Get driving license
    1. Everything is scheduled
  5. Get to 2200 ELO in chess
    1. Spend some time in the evening after coming from the office or pause it till thesis is done
    2. Join a chess club nearby
  6. Learn to speak Finnish
    1. Currently paused
  7. Get to sub 64kg weight with good health
    1. Exercise daily and manage the food intake

The priority should be

  1. Finishing the thesis
  2. Finishing the work at the office
  3. Health - Although it has the highest priority but it is an on going thing
  4. Driving license
  5. Learning Finnish

This focused approach might be the best once, because it tackles the issue with not making significant progress in any one direction. I am trying to make progress in multiple direction, which is inherently bad. This results in shallow progress and doesn’t compound, which is important. The time we are spending on each task anyway. So the better way should be to spend it in such a way that it results in meaningful progress and not in shallow growth, which can be eroded easily.

So, essential thing is to slow down and not try to do too many things. Eliminate things that are stopping you from making meaningful progress. Focus on one thing and move it in a direction which compounds the knowledge and progress. Forget about managing other things. It is not for ever, so once it is done, we can always pick up the thing later on. The essential thing is to use concentrated effort to compound the progress.

One can keep some time for other task so not to loose progress, however, if we put concentrated effort after sometime, it does come back quite fast and we can built it from there. So one thing at a time for the time being.

Two major focus, finish the job in office related to ancillary market and work on the thesis.

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