Making Real Work More Tractable

We can make changes in our productivity systems to shift away from the easy satisfaction of checking off to-do items.

1. Elevate the status of your sincere attempts. Measure your day with progress than hours, this naturally pushes to more tractable tasks.
2. Narrow your focus to the “real” work. Keep a deep work tally. It prevents you from counting emailing and others that distorts away from more central challenges.
3. Simply stop tracking. If a metric misleads, it may be better to stop paying attention to it. If counting the books read is keeping you from doing the important tasks, stop counting.