About Productivity
As I am watching YouTube, and there is a lot of advertisements about AI tools, especially about productivity, and how it can blow your mind, and give you back hours. This made me think about some of the stuff I have read on this topic. I have not read a lot, but I think I have read enough to have my own opinions about it, and also how I am structuring my life.
I have read a couple of books about the topic of productivity and time management. The first one is Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, and the second one is Anti-Time Management. Both books approach the productivity and time management problem from different perspectives.
Surprising the main points from both books are similar:
- time is limited,
- your energy and attention is limited,
- the most important thing is focus and prioritisation.
And also there is a call to action on changing your life right now, not tomorrow, and also a focus on enjoying THE NOW, i.e. be in the moment. The thing we have to do is to really think through is what your main priorities in life are, and ensure your limited time, energy and attention is focused on them. The Anti-Time Management book has some frameworks, if you need more structure on the thinking.
So it is less about doing the thing faster, i.e. making more widgets like in a factory, but really figuring out what kind of widget you want to make before you focus on speed. Or put another way, figure out where you want to go, and then figure out the best (or fastest?) way to get there. Basically do not “optimise a thing that shouldn’t exist”.
Since I have been on a break for almost a year now, with very limited work, I have found that once you have decided what your main goals are in life: setup a rigid routine, a fixed time every day or week helps a lot. I think that’s why people like the structure that the modern work life has given us, a somewhat set time, Monday to Friday, working on challenging problems, day in day out. And after doing that for N number of years, you become an expert, or at least good.
So what I am trying to say is that, it is not that these tools, frameworks, and etc can’t help you. But they won’t really change anything unless you have decided what you want in life.
