Productivity Mastery: Conquer the Chaos with These 7 Simple Systems

You are reading an excerpt from The Challenge, a newsletter where I discuss self-improvement, goal-setting, habits, time management, and health tips and tricks.

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• an infographic to track it.

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Toxic productivity is the desire for productivity at all times at the expense of other priorities.

I’ve suffered from this kind of behavior for the past two years at different times. I still fall back into it sometimes. And when it happens, I can’t stand being unproductive. And my mind is always on work more.

But lately, I’ve been trying to control this need and take care of my mental health more. And if you are in the same spiral of doom, I suggest you do the same.

If you’re interested, we can discuss toxic productivity more in-depth (leave a comment if you want) . But for now, here are a few things to track to understand if you have a rotten relationship with productivity.

• You can't turn off and spend time with your family and friends.
• You feel guilty when unproductive, even if you already did a lot.
• And your productivity affects your health or personal relationships.

You may want to rethink your productivity if you have these behaviors. And you can only start from scratch to succeed at it.

There are many reasons why you might be unhappy with your daily achievements. But toxic productivity and procrastination have to be the two main reasons you feel like you haven’t done enough. And, in one case, you will be right. But the solution is the same – you must rethink your productivity.

So, how can you do that?

Here are five new patterns that can help improve your productivity.

Have you ever tried to be productive when you are sick? It’s not the best feeling in the world.

You can try as hard as you want. But you won’t do much because your brain focuses on keeping you alive instead.

So why would you want to neglect your health and trigger that outcome?

Wellness comes before anything else. And you have to focus on your health first to remain productive.

Cal Newport’s Deep Work is one of the most influential books of the last ten years. And it has been quickly ramping up between the gods of productivity like Atomic Habits by James Clear or Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy.

But why is this book so valuable?

Newport’s power stays in the simplicity of his system.

With deep work, everything is simple. You pick a task. And then you focus deeply on it, closing everything else out. Therefore, you will work faster and better, and your wellbeing will benefit too.

Productivity is not just about doing more but also taking better breaks.

Some people take too many breaks, others too few. You may be distracted during your time off and procrastinate. Or you may never disconnect from work and get back to it more exhausted than when you left.

All those behaviors show poor break management. Yet, when you don’t give your brain enough time to breathe or give it too much of it, it will turn against you.

I love to-do lists. They have been my first love. So I can’t leave them even if I want to. But I realize simple to-do lists are not enough anymore.

They can help you in the beginning. We all had our to-do lists moment. But there comes a day when you have to give them up.

Productivity comes with more complex systems. And we will see some of them in a moment.

The Challenge helps me stay away from my work. But I am a software developer. I know how much AI is affecting our lives. And it will do even more in the future.

Today, you need good prioritization skills to enhance your productivity. But tomorrow, AI might find the best route towards success. It might define your goals based on your life dreams. And you will only need to work according to the plan.

So, don’t undermine the power of AI in the future of productivity. It might become a weapon for us all.

Introducing these five new patterns in your life is simple. But it’s always better to adopt systems someone else has built and tested instead of starting from scratch.

So, here are a few tools that can bring you many advantages and make you more productive.

The Eisenhower matrix is a simple but powerful tool to prioritize useful and remove useless tasks. We already talked about it once on the Challenge, and you also have an infographic to use it. But here’s a short recap of what you need to know.

The Eisenhower matrix has four sections based on the urgency and importance of the tasks.

• The DO section includes tasks that are urgent and important.
• The DELAY section has critical tasks you can do later.
• The DELEGATE section includes tasks that are urgent but not important.
• And the DELETE section has neither urgent nor important tasks.

Task ranking is one of the most efficient ways to prioritize them. And with the Ivy Lee method, you will rank your tasks based on their priority.

• Write the six most important things you want to do the following day.
• Prioritize those six tasks based on their importance.
• During the day, only concentrate on one task at a time.
• Finish everything on the list.
• Repeat the process every day.

You will achieve higher productivity if you assess the tasks the day before. Your brain will already start to think about it. And you will save the most productive hours of the day - the morning.

When you struggle to keep track of everything, you can always build a master list.

• Start to make a list of everything you have to do.
• Break all your tasks into monthly, weekly, and daily goals.
• Prioritize the most effective work.
• And add any new task to the master list.
• And review it in a weekly session.

Every time you finish a task, you get a rush of dopamine that grows with the complexity of what you just finished. So, one of the strongest methods to stay productive is to work on the hardest task of the day first thing in the morning. This way, everything else will be much simpler.

I’ve already discussed the pilot story and Warren Buffett’s prioritization method in a dedicated issue. However, here’s a short recap.

• Write your top 25 life goals.
• Circle the top 5 goals that matter more than anything else.
• Put the other 20 goals on a separate list of things to avoid at all costs.

Most of the methods we discussed focus on a single level of priority. But you can do better than that.

• Write a list of tasks and rank them from A to E (where A is the top priority).
• Give each “A” task a number that indicates the order in which you will work on them.
• Repeat the process for each letter, and you will have a double-priority list.

Have you ever felt like you have to do something only because you spent so much time and resources on it?

The sunk cost fallacy is the name of the psychological effect I just described. And you can use it to trick your mind into doing things.

But be careful – you will never get your time back. So, think twice about your priorities and where you decide to invest your time. If a task doesn’t give any returns, you better abandon it.

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Here are some books you can buy through my Amazon referral links to support The Challenge.

• Atomic Habits by James Clear
• Get Things Done by David Allen
• The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson