Fixed schedule productivity
In the seven days preceding my first writing these words, I participated in sixty-five different e-mail conversations. Among these sixty-five conversations, I sent exactly five e-mails after five thirty-five conversations, I sent exactly five e-mails after five thirty p.m. I don’t send e-mails after five thirty. But given how intertwined e-mail has become with work in general, there’s a more surprising reality hinted by this behavior: I don’t work after five thirty p.m.
I call this commitment fixed-schedule productivity, as I fix the firm goal of not working past a certain time, then work backward to find productivity strategies that allow me to satisfy this declaration.
Nagpal early in her academic career she found herself trying to cram work into every free hour between seven a.m. and midnight ( because she has kids, this time, especially in the evening, was often severely fractured). It didn’t take long before she decided this strategy was unsustainable, so she set a limit of fifty hours a week and worked backward to determine what rules and habits were needed to satisfy this constraint. Nagpal, in other words, deployed fixed-schedule productivity.
She ended up earning tenure on schedule and then jumping to the full professor level after only three additional years. How did she pull this off? One of the main techniques for respecting her hour limit was to see drastic quotas on the major sources of shallow endeavors in her academic life. For example, she decided she would travel only five times per year for any purpose, as trips can generate a surprisingly large load of urgent shallow obligations (from making lodging arrangements to writing talks). Five trips a year may still sound like a lot, but for an academic it’s light.
To emphasize this point, note that Matt Welsh, a former colleague of Nagpal in the Harvard computer science department once wrote a blog post in which he claimed it was typical for junior faculty to travel twelve to twenty-four times a year. (imagine the shallow efforts Nagpal avoided in sidestepping an extra ten to fifteen trips!)
To create a fixed schedule productivity.
Awareness is the key to change: You can’t change what you don’t know. The biggest challenge is that we are sleepwalking through our choices. We are not even aware of the choices we are making.
For 3-5 days write down what you’re doing, time, and place on a piece of paper to identify how you spend your time to bring AWARENESS.
THE COMPOUND EFFECT by Darren Hardy – Keeping your Scorecard
Right this moment: Pick an area of your life where you most want to be successful. Do you want more money in the bank? A trimmer waistline? The strength to compete in an Iron Man event? A better relationship with your spouse or kids? Picture where you are in that area, right now. Now picture where you want to be: richer, thinner, happier, you name it. The first step toward change is awareness. If you want to get from where you are to where you want to be, you have to start by becoming aware of the choices that lead you away from your desired destination. Become very conscious of every choice you make today so you can begin to make smarter choices moving forward.
To help you become aware of your choices, I want you to track every action that is related to the area of your life you want to improve. If you’ve decided you want to get out of debt, you’re going to track every penny you pull from your pocket. If you’ve decided you want to lose weight, you’re going to track everything you put into your mouth. Simply carry around a small notebook . You’re going to write it all down.
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