#257： The Productivity Project
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 5 minutes
Words per Minute
180.26392
Summary
Chris Bailey took a year out of his life to test all the productivity advice out there, and has written a book sharing what has worked for him. In this episode, we discuss the common misconceptions about productivity that lead people astray in their goals, why having a why is the most important step in becoming more productive, and why planning your day around your personal energy cycle can boost your productivity significantly.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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Well, along with getting into shape, being more productive is a common goal people have.
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And while there are a ton of books and articles out there filled with productivity advice,
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which ones actually work? Well, my guest today took a year out of his life to test all the
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productivity advice out there and has written a book sharing what has worked for him. His name
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is Chris Bailey, and he's the author of the book, The Productivity Project, Accomplishing More by
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Managing Your Time, Attention, and Energy. And today on the show, Chris and I discuss the common
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misconceptions about productivity that lead people astray in their goals, why having a why is the
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most important step in becoming more productive, and why planning your day around your personal
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energy cycle can boost your productivity significantly. Chris also gives specific
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tactics about how to beat procrastination, strengthening your ability to focus. This
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episode is chock full of actionable advice, so take notes. After the show is over, check out the show
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notes at aom.is slash productivity project. Chris Bailey, welcome to the show.
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So you wrote a book called The Productivity Project, where you took a year of your life
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to experiment with being more productive. You tried all sorts of different things, and then
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you cataloged it on your blog and then in your book. So I'm curious, why did you decide to take
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a year out of your life? I think you had job offers on the table. You passed those up to do this
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experiment. Why did you do this? Well, somebody's got to do it, right? I mean, there's a lot of
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productivity advice out there, I think. And this life hack kind of space. There's this whole
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productivity sphere on the internet and in books and literature. And so I really wanted to take a
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year to follow this curiosity of mine. You know, some people have normal interests like cooking and
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politics and manliness and shaving, you know, whatever gets people going. But for me, for some
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weird reason, I have no idea why. It might be the fact that both my parents are psychologists,
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which kind of makes me a bit of a weirdo, I guess. I've been into this idea of productivity.
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And I don't mean product, you know, productivity as it's a word that has a lot of baggage attached to
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it. You know, people think of something that's so cold and corporate and all about reducing their
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life down to a spreadsheet. But the way I think of productivity and the way I've always thought of it
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is we only have so much time. And so the best productivity tactics exist to allow us to accomplish
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more in what limited time we have. And so I wanted to take a year. I looked at how much money I had in
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the bank because I'd worked up to that point so that I could receive a couple job offers. So I looked
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at how much I had in the bank. I didn't have a ton, but I thought if I eat a lot of beans and rice and
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live with my girlfriend for a year and really kind of slummed it, I could make it through a year or 12
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months of following this curiosity of mine where I could separate the productivity advice out there,
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kind of work as a sieve in a way where, you know, take in all the research, interview as many experts
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as would talk to me. Thankfully, more spoke to me as the project went on and, you know, poured over
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journal articles and books to really filter out and experiment with what works and what doesn't.
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So you weren't just looking at life hack blogs to get the ideas for your experiments. You were
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actually looking at scientific research on the issue of the facets of productivity that are out there.
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Well, I think you have to because that's the thing about the best productivity advice is the best...
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Here's the thing about productivity advice, man. Like you got to read, you know, for all the time you
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spent reading or even listening to people like me ramble on about productivity advice, you have to
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make that time back and then some or else you're basically just looking at productivity porn. And
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there's a lot of productivity porn out there. And most life hacks are like, oh, fashion this pen to
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a paper clip and put it on your shoe and you can get more... Like that's, you know, a lot of hogwash
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that's built into tactics like that. Like don't get me wrong. It's fun to read about. And I love reading
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about that stuff as much as the next guy. But really, I think where productivity earns its keep
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is in allowing us to basically get everything done that we have to so we have more time for what's
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actually meaningful to us. Right. So let's talk about how you kind of mentioned how you define
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productivity a bit. It's about getting more done in the limited time you have. But it seems like you
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have a broader definition of productivity because most people, when they think productivity, they
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think time, time management. That's what I do. But how do you... What other facets of life do you
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incorporate in productivity? That was the fascinating part of the productivity project is I went into it
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thinking, okay, you know, the way to become more productive is to work faster, faster, harder,
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harder and manage my time better. But when I started zooming out, because when you start looking at the
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factors that go into into something like productivity, you really begin to get a sense
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of the ingredients that contribute to exactly what allows us to get more done. And so when you
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start at that definition, you know, if you started a different definition, you might come up with a
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different conclusion. But if you start with the definition of productivity, where it's how much we
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accomplish, and more than that, it's about accomplishing what we intended to do. Because, you know,
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that's the thing too, is if we intend to have a really business-like day and submit a few TPS
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reports, whatever those are, and we intend to ace a job interview and ship a new product at work,
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and then we do, I would argue that we're perfectly productive. And the same is true if we intend to
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have a nice, like I got one of these coming up tomorrow. I can't wait. You know, tomorrow I've got a
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massage booked. I've got a few books ready to go. I have some academic papers that I'm going to read
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because that's what I do for fun. Please send help. And that's what I intend to do. And I think if you
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call, you know, intend to have a relaxing day on the beach and then you do, you're perfectly
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productive in those cases. But when you zoom out to look at the different ingredients that contribute
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to your success in that way, you realize that productivity is a lot more than just managing
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your time. Because if you can't focus on what you intended to do, it doesn't matter what you
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schedule. And the same is true for your energy levels, where if you intend to, you know, do this
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day and you burn out at one or two in the afternoon, your productivity is going to be toast.
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And that was kind of the model that I came up with by the end of the productivity project is I realized
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that every single lesson that actually, you know, earned its keep, that actually allowed me to earn
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the time back that I spent on it fell into one of those three different categories, either a better
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managing my time, my attention, or my energy. And I think all three of these ingredients are crucial
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in our productivity. And why is understanding that productivity is more than just time management
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important in our knowledge economy? Well, because we no longer do work with our hands,
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we do it with our brains. And because we have such a limited pool of physiological energy in our brain,
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and we only have so much ability to vote, you've probably experienced that sensation where you're
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trying to hunker down on your work and you're staring at the same email for 10 or 15 minutes
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and looking at your response to it. And you just think, okay, man, I need a break. And then you
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step back from it. You know, you get a coffee or something like that, you take a walk, and then you
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come back and you rewrite it in two minutes and send it. You know, these ingredients are so crucial
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because for that simple fact, we no longer just do work with our hands, we do it with our brains now.
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And we need all the energy and all the focus that we can possibly bring to it. You know,
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never mind the fact that we have more distractions and interruptions than we've ever had before in our
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history. You know, this makes this more, I would say, holistic view of productivity, where it's the
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confluence of our time, attention and energy more important.
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Right. One of the things I love about your book, you start off very broad, big picture,
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the 10,000 mile view of things. And you argue that it's important for people to have a why
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of productivity. They need to have a purpose on why they're being productive. What happens if you try
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Well, this is one of the things that I found with the most productive people I encountered over
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the course of the project is the most productive executives, you know, stay at home moms, you know,
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whatever person you want to look at, they had a reason for investing in their productivity.
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And so the least productive people that I found are the ones who worked on autopilot mode.
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And you've probably felt yourself falling into that mode before where your email inbox becomes your
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to-do list, your working in response to the work that comes your way, instead of setting a direction
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for where you want to go. And so knowing why we want to become more productive, I think is crucial.
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And having a why before you invest in your productivity, I think it's essential to keep you
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motivated to keep going. For me, it's a sense of us only having so much time in our day to live our
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life. You know, the clock is ticking. This is my reason, you know, your reason might be
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that you want to become vice president and have a massive house, or that you want to live, you want
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to retire by the age of 40. Whatever your reason might be, you know, in my case, it's that we only
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have so much time, you know, we think we live until we're 90. I was thinking about this idea the other
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day, so it might come out, it might not. But this is one of those shower thoughts, you know,
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when you kind of let your mind be. I was thinking about it the other day, and we think we live to
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90, but we spend a third of our life sleeping, so we basically live to 60. We spend a third of our
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life working, so essentially we live until we're 30. And once you account for the household chores,
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the eating, the kind of maintenance stuff we do, we might have a lifespan of 10 or 20 years tops.
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And so I think that's why productivity exists, is because we only have so much time to live a
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meaningful life. Right. So you focus a section about measuring productivity. Yeah. Because right,
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there's that phrase, what gets measured gets managed. Oh man, that phrase. Oh, it makes me
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upset. Sorry. Makes you upset. Okay, well, why does it make you upset? So I mean, why is that?
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Because in the knowledge economy, how do you measure knowledge work? You know, you could have two
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programmers, and programmers are a good go-to example. You know, you give them both an hour,
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and programmer A writes 800 lines of code, programmer B writes 20 lines of code. How do you
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measure their productivity? It looks like the programmer A who wrote, you know, hundreds of
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lines of code is infinitely more productive when programmer B might have solved the problem in the
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first five minutes. And, you know, solved it smarter using more experience and knowledge than the first
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guy. And this is, I think, why measuring productivity is more of an art than a science in this way, where
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when it's about how much we accomplish, rather than any other factor, it's more difficult to manage in
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that way. Like you look at where we used to work, when we used to work in more of a, I call it the time
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economy in the productivity project, where there was a direct relationship between how many hours we
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worked and exactly how productive we were. If we worked one hour on an assembly line, we shipped 10
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widgets. If we worked 10 hours on that same assembly line, we can do 100 widgets. Simple math, because
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it's hard to, simple math, because it's hard to do math live on a podcast. But today, you know, the
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connection between how long we work for and how much we accomplish has been severed, because we can
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invest more in cultivating how much energy we have, and we can focus deeper on our work and get two
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hours of work accomplished in 30 minutes, if we invest in our productivity the right way. And productivity
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tactics that allow us to do that are elusive. You know, I experienced with hunt, I experimented with
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hundreds of them over the course of the project. And I probably whittled it down to about 20 or 25 in
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the book, because these tactics are hard to find. But the most, the best ones allow us to, you know,
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take a step back and think about what's actually important.
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Right. So, I mean, it sounds like you're saying you can't measure productivity, or is there a metric you
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can use, or are you just sort of, if you get the stuff done that you needed to get done, you are
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I would say that. And the way I measure my productivity is I keep an accomplishments list.
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And so, throughout the week, whenever I make a milestone in, you know, in a certain project,
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whenever I knock something out of the park, whenever I ship something, I put it on the accomplishments
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list, and I look back on that at the end of the week. And, you know, this goes to the idea that,
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and I fall into this trap all the time, by the way, where the idea that we want to invest in our
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productivity, where we want to become more productive, on a certain level, implies that
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we're not entirely satisfied with where we're at already. And it's kind of a problem to rectify,
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frankly, when it comes to investing in our productivity. But I've found that keeping this list
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allows me to really align what I'm doing over the course of the day to what will actually allow me
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to achieve more, rather than just do more. Because, you know, when that connection between
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how long we work and how much we accomplish has been severed, you know, that idea of looking at how
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much we accomplish has never been more important. And this is what bugs me about a lot of traditional
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team environments, by the way. I was speaking at Google last week, and the way they manage their
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employees at Google is fascinating, because they don't look at how many hours the employees there
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work. Because, you know, somebody could work eight to four, somebody could work 10 to six, it doesn't
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really matter. What matters is how much they accomplish. And that's really what they look at,
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at the end of the day. And, you know, if there's a pet peeve that I have with the way we manage each
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other in organizations, and, you know, the way we manage our own productivity, it's that we look at
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what we do, rather than how much we accomplish. And that's the thing about busyness, right?
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Is busyness is really no different from laziness, when it doesn't lead us to accomplish more over the
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course of the day. Because we could be busy answering email all day long, or we could be
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busy checking social media all day long. But because not all tasks in our work are created equal,
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we have to separate what's important from what isn't, and really align ourselves to work on that
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Well, that's great. That's a great segue to my next question. How do you figure out what's
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Nothing like a good segue, right? Am I right? The way I like to do this, and it's difficult
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to invest in your productivity if you don't first take a step back and consider what you actually
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want to become more productive on. And I think that's the thing a lot of people miss with the
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whole life hack space and productivity advice space, is you have to have a good sense of what's
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actually important in your work. Because when you get right down to it, you don't get paid to check
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email. You don't get paid to be on social media. You don't get paid to be busy. You get paid to do
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a small number of things. Usually, most people in the knowledge economy, where we trade our knowledge
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and our productivity for a paycheck, as opposed to just our time, we get paid to do more complex work.
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And so I think one of the best things, and I write about this in the book, but I'll give you
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kind of the Coles notes or the Cliff notes summary. I'm in Canada, so I accidentally dropped these
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Canadian references like Coles notes. We're getting 20 centimeters of snow today, by the way,
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in November. It's absolutely disgusting. But I think one of the best things that you can do
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before you invest in your productivity is make a list of every single activity you do in your work
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over the course of a month. And this is freeing in and of itself, by the way, because how often do
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you step back and think, okay, what am I actually doing here? But once you have that list, ask yourself,
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if I can only do one thing on this list day in, day out, every day, all day, which of these would
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allow me to accomplish the most? Which of these is the most meaningful? And that is the most productive
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task in your work. Because again, productivity is how much we accomplish, not how much we produce.
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And more than that, it's about working deliberately and with more intentionality behind what we're doing.
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So taking this step back and thinking about what's important is crucial. And once you get the first
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one, once you got that list, think, okay, what's the second most valuable activity that I'm actually
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doing here? And what's the third most valuable? And you'll probably find that after you've picked
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two, three, in some cases, even four activities that are central in your work, your productivity after
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that will drop off a cliff. Because we really, in our work today, only a few things are important.
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It's mentoring new employees, it's writing code, it's, you know, writing, whatever it is that's
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central in our work. And everything in addition to that, either supports our work like email and
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instant messaging and calls and meetings, or it can be eliminated or delegated entirely.
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So that's, you know, long answer aside, that's, that's one of the most valuable things. And it's
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kind of tedious, right? But it feels good after you do this, because you get a signal of what's
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So let's say you figure out what your three or four things that are the most important in your work.
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And you mentioned like, with the other stuff that's not so important, you either delegate or
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eliminate it. What do you do with the stuff that you can't delegate or eliminate? How can you manage
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Do you have a lot of email? How do you deal? I'm curious, like, what your email situation is like.
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I'm going to send you a lot of, I'm going to send you like five or 10 emails a day now.
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No, like on my contact form, I don't have a contact form. I have my post office box address.
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Oh, that's cool. Do people send you like handwritten?
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Yeah. And people send handwritten letters, which, I mean, most of the email I was getting through
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that form were PR stuff. And so as soon as I put that buffer up, that just almost disappeared.
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Oh, man. I need to get me some of that. Because I probably get probably a similar situation as you.
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But yeah, things like that in our work, like email, like meetings, we can't get rid of email, right?
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Nobody in their right mind gets rid of email. But when we can't eliminate something entirely,
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we can either delegate it. So I have my assistant kind of comb through my emails to
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archive anything that's selfish or anything that's too promotional so that I can deal with
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the rest. I check my email once every day at 3 p.m. But the better way to do this and the more
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realistic way to do this instead of delegating is to shrink how much time and attention we spend on
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these tasks instead of delegating them. And so, you know, scheduling windows throughout the day
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to check your email. I think a good place to start with this because, you know, it's so difficult to
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make drastic changes like these overnight. If you can't, you know, set up a P.O. box, because that's
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that's kind of a cool idea. I might have to do that. I might steal that, man.
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It is to simply notice how many times you check email over the course of the day automatically,
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because chances are the number is a lot higher than you think. I think it was rescue time that
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looked at how many times over the course of the day knowledge workers checked email and they checked
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it an average of 41 times. And when I saw this stat, I thought there's no way I checked my email 41
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times. And so I made a little tally myself and I checked it like 35 times. It was ridiculous because
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email is this, you know, we get so much validation and stimulation from checking it. We get it fires up
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every emotion in us. And so by pre-deciding when we're going to invest our time into something like
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this, we can level up and become a lot more productive. I have an autoresponder where if somebody
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emails me, it says, I only check my email once a day at 3 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, and I'll get to
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your message then. And it's simple. And people seem to not be too upset about it because they realize that
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email isn't an important and vital aspect of our work. You know, it feels important and vital. But as long as
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somebody gets a response and doesn't have to wait forever for it, we can level up and become more
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productive that way. So by pre-deciding and how we're going to shrink these elements, I have a kind
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of a VIP email where the people that I work more closely with, like my publisher, like my agents,
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like my assistant, they have access to this email address so they can ping me throughout the day and
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and I can correspond with them that way. But everybody else, you know, it's kind of a filter
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in that way where I've pre-decided how I'm going to shrink these elements and deal with them that way.
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All right. So batch the email, only check it a few times a day and just focus on email and that's it.
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I guess another thing with that is like, don't use your email as a to-do list.
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I think that's what a lot of people, that trips me up often is that's what keeps me in my email all the
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times I'm using it as a to-do list. Yeah. And that's, that's a, it's a tough
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habit to break, but it's one that's worth breaking, you know, taking, and it seems like an extra step,
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right? You know, you get an email, which has something you have to action and then you take
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that and you put it on your to-do list. It seems like, like more hassle than it's worth,
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but you got to realize that when we're constantly tapped into this world of email,
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I think it was Gloria Mark, she's an attention researcher I spoke with in the project. She
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found that when we're totally interrupted in our work, we can lose as much as 25 minutes
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of productivity because of that interruption. So when we have email notifications popping up
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into the corner of our screen and buzzing us on our phone, that can derail our productivity a lot
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more than we think, especially when it requires our full attention to deal with. And so it might seem
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more efficient to use your email as a, as a to-do list, but it really isn't in practice.
00:24:55.980
And what about, uh, the, the maintenance, it's a mess today here in snowy Ottawa. It's like, um,
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it's like the first snowfall of the season. You would think us Canadians would have this stuff down
00:25:10.080
where we get snow and we shuffle it, but, uh, having troubles drivers, right?
00:25:14.920
Drivers. Well, we've been talking about work stuff, but like, what about, um, like just life
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maintenance stuff, like grocery shopping, cleaning, cooking, you know, paying bills,
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making appointments. I mean, some people, they can hire personal assistants to take care of that
00:25:30.180
stuff and they have the money to outsource a lot of this stuff. But like, what if you don't,
00:25:33.480
um, how can you, how can you be more effective? Uh, so there doesn't take up, it doesn't interrupt
00:25:38.940
your day and allows you to focus more on what's more important. Well, these are kind of those
00:25:44.600
maintenance tasks, right? Like, um, things we have to do to live a, a reasonable life that don't
00:25:51.740
necessarily progress our life forward in any ways. And so things like, uh, yeah, like you said,
00:25:57.280
making appointments, like cooking meals for the week, which I like to do every Sunday, like cleaning up
00:26:02.460
around the house, like doing grocery shopping and chores around the city. Uh, what I like to do with
00:26:07.740
these things is I've been annoyed by these types of tasks for a while. As somebody who's into
00:26:13.100
productivity, you know, I don't want to be a slob, right? You got to shave, you got to do beard
00:26:17.980
maintenance and stuff like that. But at the same time, these don't progress your life forward in any
00:26:24.700
meaningful way. And so, you know, it's funny, we're just chatting about batching because the best way
00:26:30.440
I've found a deal with these is to batch them all together. I like to do this on Sunday afternoon.
00:26:36.240
Uh, yesterday I made myself a couple cups of coffee, not at once, you know, I made one and then
00:26:41.440
drank it. Then I made another cup with an arrow. Have you tried an AeroPress by the way?
00:26:46.440
No, I have not. I know we've written about them before.
00:26:49.000
Oh, I'm sure. It's very like in the vein of what you guys write about. It's the best cup of coffee.
00:26:54.200
Uh, in fact, save yourself some money by not buying my book and buy an AeroPress instead.
00:26:59.720
Actually, actually they work, they work well together. Um, you know, I make a cup of coffee
00:27:04.740
on Sunday afternoon. And what I do is I sip on this while I have go through my maintenance day list.
00:27:11.520
And so this has everything like setting a few intentions for the week ahead,
00:27:15.920
like cleaning up, like doing groceries, like preparing lunches for the week, which I do with
00:27:20.600
my girlfriend, uh, like doing any errands that happen to accumulate. And the idea behind this
00:27:26.300
ritual is first of all, you feel amazing when your whole house is clean and also your mental space is
00:27:32.540
clean because there's, there's a direct relationship between how clean our environment is and how clearly
00:27:38.180
we think. Uh, in fact, you know, I'm kind of nerd nerding out about this idea right now.
00:27:43.620
If you want to be creative, you have to go into a messy room because the more scattered the,
00:27:49.800
the physical environment is the more scattered your mental environment is too. And, and the more
00:27:54.880
disparate your ideas and the connections you'll make will be, but the opposite is true too. You
00:28:00.460
feel more mental clarity when you're in a clean environment, but that's kind of a tangent, obviously.
00:28:06.180
Uh, so Sunday afternoon, I lump all these tasks together. I don't do them throughout the week.
00:28:11.680
I even have things like cutting nails on my maintenance day list because I don't want to do that
00:28:17.460
throughout the week. I want to make it a ritual of doing it on Sunday. And you feel like you're
00:28:22.280
propelled into the week ahead when you, when you tackle this ritual, it's frankly, it feels kind of
00:28:28.760
weird to talk about, but it is one of my favorite weekly rituals at home because you feel like you're
00:28:35.660
starting the week with a blank slate and a fresh slate. And when you set intentions at the same time,
00:28:41.920
you know, exactly what you want to accomplish in the week ahead.
00:28:46.540
All right. So batch everything and just focus on those tasks on a single day. Um, so yeah, I mean,
00:28:52.020
one of the things I found interesting about your book is that the theme is just focus on one thing
00:28:56.760
at a time. Um, because I think most people, when they think I got to get more done, I have to just
00:29:01.560
jumble, I have to juggle multiple tasks at the, at the same time, multitasking. But you talk about in
00:29:07.440
your book, the research suggests that multitasking is probably the biggest productivity killer and you
00:29:11.920
should just monotask or just focus on one task at a time.
00:29:15.680
Yeah. And this is, I think one of the best ways to become more productive in the moment. You know,
00:29:23.160
if taking a step back and, you know, one of my intention setting rituals that I love is the rule
00:29:28.860
of three. I do that every morning. We can chat about it in a sec, but once you, you've figured out
00:29:33.840
what's important, it's on a moment by moment basis that you work towards those goals. It's not on a
00:29:41.340
general basis. This is why so many new year's resolutions fall apart is we make these grand
00:29:47.180
intentions at the start of the year, but in the moment, you know, we, we, one part of us knows we
00:29:53.600
want a six pack by the summer. And the other part of us wants to, wants to eat a cheeseburger and,
00:30:00.520
you know, veg out with a bag of chips watching Netflix. And so it's in the moment that we actually
00:30:07.420
become more productive. And the thing about the way our attention is wired is we don't have a lot
00:30:15.020
of focus to give to the world around us. One study, one of my favorite studies shows that our brain is
00:30:21.740
processing. It has the ability to process 11 million bits every second. So we, that's how much
00:30:29.720
information it's being bombarded, uh, in terms of the nerve endings in our brain, uh, every, every
00:30:35.180
single second, 11 million. But in any given moment, we can only consciously focus on 40 bits of
00:30:44.020
information. And so you, you can kind of look around when you're listening to this podcast, you
00:30:48.980
know, what you have in front of you, what you're doing right now. Maybe you're in front of your
00:30:52.680
computer. You can see that maybe you're going on a walk. Maybe you're at the gym in the room that
00:30:57.160
you're in right now. There are thousands of things that you can focus on, uh, individual thoughts
00:31:04.080
going on in your head, uh, objects in your environment, but you can only consciously focus
00:31:08.580
on 40. And so the amount of attention we have to give to what's in front of us is very, very
00:31:15.880
constrained. And, you know, the idea that multitasking doesn't work is a bit of a myth, frankly, but in
00:31:23.220
only a certain way where we can multitask, uh, on habitual things. So things that don't take
00:31:29.520
conscious energy, you know, you can breathe while you're working. Thank God, you know, we do habits
00:31:36.240
automatically without much thought. So they don't take up too much attentional space. We can walk and
00:31:41.720
chew bubble gum at the same time. Uh, we can even do habitual tasks on the computer, like, uh, you know,
00:31:48.040
reading the news while doing a bit of habitual email even, but the most vital tasks in our work,
00:31:54.840
the ones you, if you did the, the activity, we were chatting about where you take a step back and
00:32:00.720
filter out what's important from what isn't those most vital tasks in your work, regardless of the
00:32:07.980
work you do are, are so important because they take more of your attention and more of your energy.
00:32:15.260
And if you're productive, more of your time than any other task in your work. And most people, um, you
00:32:23.900
know, 1% of people, these super taskers are able to do this, maybe even less than 1%, but most people
00:32:30.760
can't actively focus on more than one of these at one time because for the simple fact that your
00:32:38.620
productivity benefits, the more attention you focus on these and they're more detailed, uh, they're more
00:32:44.840
immersive. Um, they take more focus to do right. And so this is why multitasking doesn't work is
00:32:51.340
because the most productive tasks in our work require more of us.
00:32:57.860
So that's why you argue instead of like having this massive to-do list in front of you where you're
00:33:02.080
just kind of clicking off, you know, checking off things, just narrow your to-do list to three big tasks
00:33:07.600
a day. Yeah. And this is called the rule of three and it's one of my favorite rituals. Um,
00:33:14.620
and here it is. And this is, you know, it's a simple thing that you can action right away
00:33:18.540
that, you know, again, you have to earn the time you spend investing in productivity advice back
00:33:23.620
this you'll earn back a hundred times over every morning. At the start of the day, you fast forward to
00:33:31.060
the end of the day in your head. And you ask yourself by the time this day is done, what three
00:33:37.040
main things will I want to have accomplished? And it does a, it does a number of things. It sounds
00:33:42.160
like kind of a simple rule, but it, excuse me, it at one time, it allows you to separate what's
00:33:49.880
important that day from what isn't. And unlike a lot of other systems where, you know, it takes hours
00:33:56.540
to organize everything on your plate and you, you lose a lot of time and actually working and actually
00:34:03.880
being productive on those things. It only takes three, four minutes every morning where you define
00:34:10.180
these three things and you separate what's important from what isn't. And you can consider
00:34:15.640
your constraints at the same time. So, you know, I'm an entrepreneur. I work for myself. I have a lot
00:34:21.340
of autonomy in my work as, as you likely do too. And we have more flexibility and more control over
00:34:28.060
what we intend to accomplish, but we can consider the constraints. And so if we have a full day of
00:34:32.860
meetings or if we're working a job where we don't have total freedom and flexibility with how we spend
00:34:38.740
our, our time, attention, and energy, we can adjust our schedule accordingly and our attentions
00:34:45.180
accordingly. And sometimes, sometimes our day will inform what we intend to accomplish. And so this
00:34:51.160
is kind of, you know, these three tactics. And by the way, at the start of the day, I do this. And
00:34:58.040
also at the start of the week, every Sunday, I define my three weekly intentions for work and for home.
00:35:04.200
So this is how I get, get some modicum of balance for the week ahead. And this is the idea, you know,
00:35:10.900
that we don't work on autopilot to become more productive. We work deliberately and with intention
00:35:16.500
to become more productive. It's kind of where that idea filters down. And so we start by looking at
00:35:23.180
what's important in general in our work. Then we look at what's important every week. Then we look at
00:35:28.760
what we intend to do every day. And, you know, if we only did three things all day, every day, we probably
00:35:35.020
wouldn't have a job after much of a period of time. So we need a to-do list, I think, in conjunction
00:35:39.980
with this to manage what we have to get done. But when we bring that down to the moment, where we
00:35:46.620
work on one thing at one time, especially when we have the most energy throughout the day, that,
00:35:52.980
I think, is the stuff that productivity dreams are made of. And, you know, I'm a bit of a nerd about
00:35:59.540
this stuff. So I might be a bit more into this than some other people. But that excites me more than
00:36:05.440
anything. Because that's how we actually achieve our broader goals. And that's actually how we
00:36:11.580
accomplish more. Because when we do those three things, we can choose what's important and actually
00:36:17.060
act towards that every day and every moment. We'll talk about energy management here in a bit. But
00:36:22.780
let's talk about procrastination. Let's say you have some task on your rule of three list that's super
00:36:30.200
boring. It's hard. But it's completely vital in order for you to progress to where you want to get.
00:36:37.720
And so you just put it off and you put it off and you put it off. So why do we procrastinate? Is it
00:36:43.860
because stuff is boring and hard? Or is there something else to why we procrastinate?
00:36:49.060
Yeah, let's let's look at like, what's something you're procrastinating on right now? I'll put you on
00:36:53.400
the spot. Let's see, I'm procrastinating on making some edits to a book that we're publishing here.
00:37:01.060
Oh, nice. So you look at a task like that, making edits to a book. And you know, I found the same
00:37:09.380
thing when I was editing my book or looking over the edits that that other people made. It turns out
00:37:15.900
that there are certain attributes a task can have that make us more likely to procrastinate on it.
00:37:23.400
And there's, if I remember right, there's seven of them. And I'm going to try to remember them
00:37:28.540
here. Those are whether a task, like you said, is boring. And so, you know, editing a book,
00:37:34.940
pretty boring. It's frustrating, whether it's difficult, whether it lacks personal meaning,
00:37:40.960
whether it lacks intrinsic reward, so it's not rewarding in and of itself, whether it's ambiguous,
00:37:47.680
or whether it's unstructured. And so the more of these triggers, essentially, a task has,
00:37:53.120
the more likely you are to put it off. So editing a book, it's pretty boring. It's a bit frustrating,
00:37:58.180
because, you know, it requires a lot of attention. It's difficult. You know, it might be difficult,
00:38:04.420
but it might be more tedious than difficult. It's not really rewarding in and of itself, because
00:38:09.740
books are pretty long, as people know. It's pretty ambiguous, and it's definitely unstructured.
00:38:16.260
And so this is why we procrastinate on stuff. You know, you look at something that you don't
00:38:21.500
procrastinate on, like watching Netflix, as an example. You know, I wouldn't know anything about
00:38:26.780
that. But, you know, watching Netflix doesn't have any of these. It's not boring. It's not
00:38:30.900
frustrating. It's not difficult at all. It probably lacks personal meaning. So, you know, unless you're
00:38:36.480
watching, like, nature documentaries or something. It, you know, it's not ambiguous. It's not unstructured.
00:38:43.740
In fact, it's so structured that you get, like, a little preview of the next episode, and it
00:38:49.980
automatically starts playing before you're finished watching the current episode. Again, you know, as a
00:38:55.580
productivity expert, I only know this from the research that I've done, obviously. But, you know,
00:39:01.800
it doesn't have any of these triggers, and so we don't put it off. You know, doing our taxes has most
00:39:07.660
of them. But by using this science behind why we procrastinate, it turns out that we can actually
00:39:15.160
flip these triggers around. So if editing the book is boring, if you find yourself putting it off,
00:39:22.060
you know, you can make a plan to reverse that. So if it's boring, you can go to a fancy cafe and get a
00:39:27.880
latte. You know, it's almost, you know, Christmas here. And so maybe you can get, like,
00:39:33.400
one of those, like, candy cane lattes or something. I had a rosemary latte the other day. You know,
00:39:40.740
like, rosemary, the herb? It's pretty good in Ottawa here. If anybody's in Ottawa,
00:39:46.740
email me and I'll let you know the place. So you can make it less boring by doing that. That makes
00:39:52.120
it less frustrating at the same time. If it's unstructured, you can make a plan over the next,
00:39:57.780
say, two weeks to do chapter one this day and chapter two this day and make a schedule for when
00:40:04.440
you're going to do these things. And by making this plan and setting these intentions, you can
00:40:10.360
actually reverse the triggers around and make it a more enjoyable experience and less likely that
00:40:17.320
you'll put it off. Fantastic. Any other tactics besides tweaking the triggers to reduce
00:40:22.560
procrastination? Part of it is thinking about your future self at the same time. This is one of my
00:40:30.160
favorite tactics, and it's kind of a weird one. But we are so disconnected with our future self,
00:40:37.220
which is basically just ourself, but in the future. In front of me here on my desk, I have a nice framed
00:40:44.840
picture of myself, as most egotistical people do. But this picture of myself is of a 60-year-old version
00:40:54.480
of me. And I had this picture done up and framed. I actually got a fracture done where they print the
00:41:01.140
picture on a glass. It's pretty cool. And it sits on my desk all day so that I can consider myself in
00:41:06.840
the future. And it's kind of a simple cue. But so often we put stuff off because we're disconnected
00:41:13.140
with our future self. And so this is why we have a bunch of, you know, to work off the Netflix theme
00:41:19.320
here. I've been watching a lot of Netflix this weekend, especially I was reorganizing my filing
00:41:25.720
cabinet on maintenance day yesterday. And so I got through a few episodes of shows. But this is why we
00:41:32.000
have like documentaries that we're bound to watch someday. We buy all these classic books, and then
00:41:38.180
we end up reading, you know, the trashy books or listening to other stuff instead or watching TV
00:41:44.260
because we're disconnected with this idea of our future self. And in fact, if you wheeled yourself,
00:41:51.600
Brett, into a brain scanning machine, into an fMRI machine, and, you know, I told you, Brett, you know,
00:41:58.020
think about yourself, but in 20 or 30 years, and then think of George Clooney. The fascinating thing
00:42:06.020
about these brain scans would be that they were basically identical to one another. And so we
00:42:12.820
basically view our future self as a stranger, which is why we put stuff off. This is why we agree to,
00:42:18.560
you know, where we wouldn't want to have coffee with somebody tomorrow, we agree to coffee with them
00:42:23.440
three weeks from now. This is why we sign up for weird courses and stuff down the line where we
00:42:30.660
wouldn't want to necessarily do it next week. And so by considering the idea that in the future,
00:42:37.960
we'll basically be as we are now, except, you know, maybe a little bit more productive and
00:42:42.880
successful, we can consider the idea that chances are, you know, we won't have an infinite amount of
00:42:48.500
energy later on. Chances are, we won't have boundless time, maybe we'll even have less time,
00:42:54.720
if the trend continues, or more time, if we invest in our productivity. And we can consider the idea
00:43:01.380
that most things are worth doing right away. Right. Okay, that's fantastic. So let's talk
00:43:07.060
about managing energy. Because you say that productivity isn't just about managing time,
00:43:11.760
it's also about managing your energy as well. So you argue that you need to, in order to be
00:43:17.420
the most productive you can be, you need to work in your biological prime time.
00:43:23.140
Oh, yes. So how do we, how do we figure out what these prime times are? First, I did it kind of a,
00:43:30.900
an intense way in the productivity project, because, you know, why not, right? I only had a year to do
00:43:37.700
this stuff. So what I did for the span of three weeks, and I did a little prep before, is I cut out
00:43:45.320
caffeine, I cut out alcohol, I cut out sugary foods, because they kind of spike and, and influence
00:43:52.620
your energy levels, and then you crash. I ate small meals, so that my energy was frequent throughout
00:43:58.460
the day, I and I woke up and fell asleep naturally, because all of these ingredients influence how much
00:44:05.560
energy we have over the course of the day. And after I cut these out, and caffeine, I cut out
00:44:11.460
beforehand, because it takes our, our body a little while to, to, to catch up and kind of beat the
00:44:18.380
procrastinate or the, the caffeine withdrawal, is I charted how much energy I had out of 10,
00:44:25.160
every single hour, every single day for three weeks, excuse me, and then, excuse me, I need some,
00:44:32.200
some more coffee, I think. And then I charted how much energy I had. And I looked at how much
00:44:39.520
the kind of trend lines over the course of these three weeks. And I found something remarkable.
00:44:46.360
And it was that without fail, there were natural patterns to my energy levels over the course of
00:44:54.260
this time. And so I found between the hours of 10 and noon, and 5 and 8pm, I had more energy than
00:45:02.060
in any other hour of the day. And I did a bit of digging into this. And part of it depends on our
00:45:08.140
chronotype, which you might have heard of, which basically dictates how much energy we have over
00:45:13.100
the course of the day. And so morning birds, these people who rise at, you know, 5am to meditate and
00:45:20.800
do yoga and stuff like that, they have more energy early on in the day. Other people who kind of
00:45:27.120
half stumble out of bed and struggle to get by like me. You know, I'm one of these people who works
00:45:35.200
late into the night, because that's when I have the most energy, we have more energy later on in
00:45:40.320
the day. And so the idea is by getting a sense and a feel for when we naturally have the most energy,
00:45:47.000
we can adjust our schedule accordingly, and shape it around when we naturally are the most productive.
00:45:53.600
Because there's a direct connection between how much energy we have, and how productive we are,
00:45:59.500
the more energy we bring to our work, the more we're going to accomplish. And because as we were
00:46:05.600
chatting, not all tasks in our work are created equal, when we do our most vital tasks, like the
00:46:12.200
three intentions that we set at the start of the day, when we naturally have the most energy.
00:46:17.580
So I like to do my three daily intentions between 10 and noon, and between 5 and 8pm.
00:46:22.880
And that's because I want those to be as productive as possible. And I want to do as
00:46:29.880
good of a job as I possibly can on them. And tasks like email, you know, I check my email every day
00:46:35.080
at 3pm. For the simple fact that I have the least amount of energy, then an email isn't that vital of
00:46:41.740
a task for me. And so we usually don't have total control and flexibility over how we manage our
00:46:48.860
schedule over the course of the day. But we usually have some, you know, we can come in a bit later
00:46:54.320
into work if we have flex hours, and, and we were more productive later on in the day, or we can show
00:47:00.660
up at 7am, not notpm, and be productive in those hours, if we find we have the most energy then.
00:47:08.020
And so the idea is that by shaping, you know, all hours of the day, not all hours of the day are
00:47:15.460
created equal. You know, there are some when we're naturally more productive than in others. And by
00:47:21.380
shaping our schedule around those hours, we can level up to become even more productive that way.
00:47:28.020
Great stuff. Yeah, I've been trying to do a better job of managing, scheduling my work around my energy
00:47:32.800
levels. I know that I'm more focused in the morning, like mid morning. So I try to do more of my writing
00:47:38.820
during those times. And then yeah, email, I save for whenever I'm just like,
00:47:42.700
are you? Are you a morning bird? Would you say? Like, what time do you usually get up at?
00:47:47.300
Well, I feel like I used to be a morning bird. But I've slowly shifted to being a night owl for some
00:47:53.180
reason. I don't know why. I've kind of just let it happen.
00:47:57.500
Yeah, it's funny. Yeah, maybe maybe you were trying to force waking up early into your schedule. And this
00:48:03.540
is what I found, because our chronotype and the way we're wired stays pretty consistent over time.
00:48:09.700
And I think a lot of people like the idea of being an early riser. And I did dozens of
00:48:16.500
productivity experiments over the course of the project. And, you know, things like living in
00:48:21.200
isolation for 10 days. I meditated for 35 hours one week, I became a total slob for another week,
00:48:28.300
all in the name of productivity. But another one of them was waking up at 530 every day. And it took
00:48:36.120
me a few months to kind of wedge this schedule in this routine into my life. And I finally had it
00:48:42.620
though, a few months into this, the ideal routine that I thought at least that productivity dreams
00:48:50.240
are made of, I woke up at 530 to make a coffee. At six, I walked over to the gym, I planned out my
00:48:57.820
daily intentions while I was working out. Then I made a healthy breakfast, I meditated,
00:49:03.200
I showered, I connected to the internet because I disconnect from the internet between 8pm and 8am
00:49:09.120
every day. I did that during the project and still do. I read and then I started working at nine and I
00:49:14.020
felt so productive because I got so much done before the rest of the world woke up. But I quickly
00:49:20.600
realized that I absolutely hated the ritual. I had to go to sleep when my friends and my girlfriend
00:49:28.320
wanted to hang out. I had to go to sleep when I was on a roll because I was so productive late at
00:49:33.360
night. And because I wanted, I needed to wake up at 530 and didn't want to compromise on sleep,
00:49:38.760
which would have been worse. And I realized that I absolutely hated the ritual because I simply have
00:49:44.600
more energy later on in the day. And that led me to a lot of research where there's no difference
00:49:51.000
in somebody's socioeconomic standing, depending on what time they wake up at. It's what we do
00:49:57.180
with the hours of our day that make the difference in our productivity. And you can think about it
00:50:02.620
logically, right? Because if you have one person that wakes up at 530 and does their routine, then
00:50:07.960
you have somebody who wakes up at 9am and does their daily routine. And the routines are the same,
00:50:13.360
they're going to be just as productive. But what does change over the course of the day is how much
00:50:20.200
energy we have and how much energy we have to bring to our work and to our life. And I think
00:50:27.200
we got to structure our day around that rather than, you know, I was in love. And this goes to
00:50:33.280
the idea of knowing why we want to make a change that we were chatting about earlier. I was in love
00:50:39.560
with this sepia tone fantasy of being this early riser who was ultra productive and woke up early every
00:50:46.940
single day. And, and, you know, I finally had it. And I realized that because of the way I'm wired,
00:50:52.260
and because of the fact that this change wasn't that important to me, it really was a waste of
00:50:58.660
time. And so not all productivity advice will work for you. And so, and this is one of the other things
00:51:04.680
that I found in the project when I was kind of separating the advice that worked from the advice
00:51:09.160
that doesn't is whenever anybody's doling out blanket productivity advice, you should question
00:51:15.720
that advice. Um, because there's a lot of people who, you know, they want to promote their, their
00:51:21.360
book or their system so that they can, you know, get speaking gigs and consulting and stuff like that.
00:51:27.480
Um, and you should always question advice. That's kind of this blanket advice where somebody has,
00:51:33.020
seems like they have everything figured out because it's really not what productivity tactics are the
00:51:37.760
best, even though some work better than others for most people. It's what productivity tactics are
00:51:43.820
the best for you. And this is true for email, you know, batching email. If you think that doesn't work
00:51:49.620
for you, don't do it. You know, figure out, figure out a different way to, to re you know, shift your
00:51:55.600
focus between email and other elements of your work less. If you think waking up early won't work for you,
00:52:01.780
don't do it. If you think a maintenance day or a maintenance half day won't work for you and you love
00:52:07.000
that feeling of, of maintaining these elements of your life throughout the day, don't do it. Um, and that,
00:52:13.060
that speaks to the idea that productivity isn't about how much we produce. It's about how much we accomplish
00:52:18.340
because the best productivity advice out there will be self-reinforcing in that we'll do it.
00:52:26.100
And then we'll feel so good because doing so allows us to accomplish that much more that we'll keep going
00:52:31.640
with it. But we really have to figure out the stuff that works for us and, and leave the rest.
00:52:37.100
Right. I also think people need to keep in mind that, uh, what works for you at one time might not
00:52:41.100
work for you in another time. Yeah. I've, I've noticed that the way I manage my day has changed
00:52:47.660
since when I was not married to when I was in college to when I have kids. Um, it's changed because
00:52:54.780
the circumstances change. And so you have to adapt to that. Um, and I remember I tried really hard to
00:52:59.660
keep doing the way that I used to do things before I had kids and like, that doesn't work. So I've had
00:53:05.000
to adjust and, uh, that's worked out for me. Well, that, that's the thing, you know, productivity
00:53:10.280
is so often a process of understanding our constraints. And so as, yeah, exactly. As the
00:53:16.800
conditions of our life changed, the tactics will change that work for us. Like waking up early is a
00:53:21.520
good example of that. We'll stay wired the same way, but once we have kids, we might find that waking
00:53:27.060
up at five 30 every morning, even though it's kind of a struggle to, to get in bed at a reasonable hour,
00:53:32.160
uh, we might find that those hours are the most serene and that we're able to write during them
00:53:37.220
and that we're able to have some time for ourself and kind of charge up before the day starts. And so
00:53:42.940
we really, I totally, I'm with you. Yeah. So let's talk about managing attention. Um,
00:53:49.660
because that's an important part of you can manage your time, have things scheduled down to a T
00:53:53.300
you can be working your prime time hours, but if you're not focused on your work, that that's all
00:54:00.060
for not. Um, so let's talk about the thing that causes like trained us to be unfocused monkeys,
00:54:07.760
basically, um, is the internet. Um, the internet just sucks productivity out. And I think we talked
00:54:13.620
about earlier, you, uh, you know, you, you need to take a break, you know, I'll just check Reddit for a
00:54:19.440
bit or I'll check Twitter. And then, you know, an hour later you're like, Oh my gosh, what just
00:54:23.880
happened? Um, and then you're trying to get focused on your work, but you want to keep checking your
00:54:28.420
email. So what can we do to get a handle on our internet driven distraction? It's funny because
00:54:36.100
the research shows, and this was a study done by, I believe Tim Pitchell out of Carleton University in
00:54:43.380
Ottawa, he found that of the time we spend on the internet, we spend 47% of our time procrastinating.
00:54:52.360
And so what that means is things quite literally take twice as long when we're connected to the
00:54:58.700
internet while we're doing them, which is a ridiculous amount of time to waste. You know,
00:55:02.920
if you want to get, in other words, four hours of work done and, you know, eight hours of work done
00:55:07.580
in four hours, just disconnect from the internet because it'll allow you to, to be distracted so
00:55:14.300
much less. But I think the answer comes down to dealing with the distractions that derail our
00:55:21.680
productivity ahead of time. And for the simple fact that we're most productive when we work towards our
00:55:27.700
goals in the moment and the distractions, especially those that reside on the internet,
00:55:32.840
the ones that are the most distracting are such because they're more attractive than our work
00:55:39.920
in the moment. And so going on Facebook or Reddit will always be a sexier task that we want to do
00:55:47.940
more than the actual real work that's in front of us. And so making a plan to deal with these
00:55:55.380
distractions, whether you find you're interrupted by email or Reddit or Twitter or Facebook, whatever
00:56:02.620
the hell you're, you're distracted by making a plan to deal with these ahead of time before they come
00:56:08.380
up. And before you're tempted to fall into a black hole of them is, is kind of the way out. And I've
00:56:16.520
been thinking about this idea recently too. And I think that distractions and interruptions that derail
00:56:24.200
our productivity can be kind of separated by two factors. The first is whether or not we have control
00:56:30.100
over them. And the second is whether they're annoying or whether they're kind of welcome or
00:56:35.740
a fun reprieve from our work. And if you kind of in your head, close your eyes, not, not if you're
00:56:42.280
driving or at the gym or in public, cause it might look kind of weird. If you draw kind of a two by two
00:56:47.520
grid in your head and on the left side is whether or not you have control over these things. And on top
00:56:54.120
is whether they're annoying or whether they're fun, the ones you can't control, um, you can't prevent
00:57:01.060
them from arising because you can't control over them. You know, whether they're fun ones, um, like,
00:57:07.420
um, you know, a call from your loved ones while you're working or your team coming by your office
00:57:13.340
to say, Hey man, you want to grab lunch? It's on me. Um, those are welcome, uh, distractions or, or ones
00:57:19.320
that are unwelcome, like phone calls or meetings you can't avoid. You can't deal with these ahead
00:57:25.740
of time, but you can deal with how you relate to them as they come up. And so you can welcome the
00:57:30.380
ones that are fun and, and try to get back on track as quickly as you possibly can for, for the
00:57:36.640
ones that, that are unwelcome. But for the ones that you can control, like email alerts, um, one of the
00:57:44.320
worst productivity detractors are email alerts because we're constantly bombarded by them.
00:57:49.440
And every single time we get one, our, our focus is interrupted. Um, email alerts, um, you know,
00:57:56.640
social media alerts, notifications of most kinds. My, my cell phone never buzzes. It never beeps.
00:58:02.820
And I check my notifications whenever I check my text messages or whenever I check the time,
00:58:07.540
because my phone happens to be my pocket watch. And that's when I deal with the interruptions that
00:58:12.160
come in. It's kind of a natural break in the day. Um, you know, you can leave your phone at home
00:58:17.180
if you find that you're wasting a lot of time on it or that you're only skimming the surface of your
00:58:22.980
work, uh, when you're on your phone, which is often the case for, for a lot of people, or you can
00:58:28.520
disable a lot of the notifications that you receive ahead of time or download an app like self-control for
00:58:36.040
the Mac. Uh, you know, there are one ones for windows too, where you can create a list of sites that
00:58:41.320
you don't want to visit when you're in your peak productivity hours, maybe enable these apps during
00:58:47.460
your, your biological prime time. And so, you know, again, the, the advice will work differently
00:58:52.680
depending on the person. Um, but this I think is, is a truth that's universal is distractions derail
00:59:00.820
our productivity because in the moment we would rather be doing them than our actual work. And so
00:59:06.980
dealing with them ahead of time, they're infinitely easier to deal with ahead of time than they are to
00:59:12.260
deal with as they come up because we can't get away from them. They're more fun. Um, and so I think
00:59:19.380
that's the best answer is first of all, figure out whether you have control over it or not and change
00:59:24.280
how you relate to it if you don't. And if you do have control, make a plan to, to change it for the
00:59:28.620
next time. Awesome. So let's say you've done, you're doing that, right? You, you've put in the,
00:59:33.280
the, the checks so you don't check the internet when you don't, when you shouldn't be, but you're
00:59:38.240
getting to work and you find yourself, man, I just can't focus. Like I'm just, the internet has
00:59:42.580
trained my brain to be constantly distracted. Um, what can we do to retrain our ability to,
00:59:49.360
to focus on a task, um, deeply? I think it comes down to the idea of to continue stumbling
00:59:58.060
and, and, and to get back up and maybe more than that to, to try these tactics while being aware
01:00:06.740
of there's another firetruck, man, this day in, uh, it's a crazy day here. Again, that, that was a,
01:00:15.220
that was a, that was a, in that quadrant. I had no control over that side to change how,
01:00:19.880
how I related to, to that distraction that derailed my focus just there. Um, but it, you know,
01:00:27.820
that's the thing about the internet is it's so stimulating, um, that it's hard to kind of
01:00:35.040
separate away from that. And sometimes I find the best answers to disconnect entirely. And that
01:00:41.540
might sound drastic, but when you consider the idea that we spent 47% of our time on the internet
01:00:48.960
procrastinating, it can often be worth it, especially when we're doing tasks that are
01:00:53.720
aversive. And so when we find ourselves doing a task that, that flips those procrastination triggers,
01:00:59.080
so it's boring, it's frustrating, it's difficult, it's ambiguous, it's unstructured. We procrastinate
01:01:05.320
the most when a task is like that. And so we should get rid of the alternatives that are more, um, or
01:01:13.660
less aversive than that. And so disconnecting entirely, uh, as a good example, I wrote most of my
01:01:18.980
book while being disconnected from the internet. And so my publisher gave me, I think 35 or 40 weeks,
01:01:25.880
uh, but I ended up writing the book in 24 weeks because I was disconnected from the internet for
01:01:31.720
most of it, even though it's pretty research heavy and writing for me, I don't have a journalism degree
01:01:38.440
or anything like that. I'm just naturally curious about this stuff. I have a business degree. And so
01:01:43.400
I'm, I'm not a writer by trade and I find writing to be, it's a fun process and it's a meaningful
01:01:48.920
process, but it's a tedious process in practice. And I procrastinate on it more than any other task
01:01:54.740
in my work. Uh, but when I disconnect from the internet and you know, I so often leave my phone
01:02:00.880
at home when I go to a, my favorite coffee shop here and have my rosemary almond milk latte, um,
01:02:07.580
you know, which I drink with one pinky in the air and I write best in those conditions because
01:02:13.740
the distractions simply aren't there. Um, my computer, the wifi on it is off. My phone is at
01:02:21.040
home. So I'm not attracted by that more, um, frankly, attractive alternative than the actual work
01:02:27.680
that I ought to be doing. And so, you know, eliminating these distractions ahead of time or,
01:02:33.140
you know, cutting yourself off entirely when you have the flexibility to do so, I think is,
01:02:38.600
is crucial. And even if you work in an, in an office type environment where you don't have a lot of
01:02:45.100
control over your work, if you have the flexibility to attend an important meeting and not be available
01:02:51.240
or connected for an hour during that time, you have the flexibility to disconnect from the internet
01:02:56.920
for an hour or two. Very cool. Well, Hey Chris, this has been a great conversation. Um, where can
01:03:02.720
people learn more about your book and your work? Yeah, that was fun. Uh, my, my book is called the
01:03:07.980
productivity project. It's available. We're, we're translating it into, I think seven languages by
01:03:13.820
now, but you know, you, you walk into any bookstore or audio bookstore, uh, metaphorically walk into an
01:03:19.640
audio bookstore. I narrate it. So if you like the sound of my voice, um, you can get it there. If you
01:03:24.100
don't like the sound of my voice, uh, the physical copy or the e-copy is, is, is the place to go for
01:03:28.840
that. Um, so it's called the productivity project. And my website is a life of productivity.com and you
01:03:37.400
can find on that website, uh, all the experiments that I've conducted and all the articles from the
01:03:44.380
productivity project. And I I'm continuing to, to post an article every Monday, uh, while I, while I do
01:03:51.180
stuff like speaking and, and consulting, but I love writing more than anything. Cause even though it's an
01:03:56.700
aversive task and I procrastinate on it, even when not many distractions are around, um, it's,
01:04:03.180
it's so meaningful. And I love sharing ideas that way too. Fantastic. Well, Chris Bailey,
01:04:07.560
thank you so much for your time. It's been a pleasure. Thanks so much for having me.
01:04:10.740
My guest today was Chris Bailey. He's the author of the book productivity project. You can find it
01:04:14.900
on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can also find out more information about Chris's work
01:04:18.880
at a life of productivity.com. You can see some of the metrics that he uses to measure his
01:04:23.460
productivity there. Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash productivity project,
01:04:27.840
where you can find links to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic.
01:04:41.560
Well, that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast. For more manly tips and advice,
01:04:45.800
make sure to check out the art of manliness website at art of manliness.com. Our show is edited by a
01:04:49.780
creative audio lab here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. If you have any audio editing needs or audio production
01:04:53.500
needs, check them out at creative audio lab.com. As always, we appreciate your support. And until
01:04:58.400
next time, this is Brett McKay telling you to stay manly.