Navigating Productivity: A few insights into task management

Ever felt like you're running in circles, with your to-do list only getting longer? And then trying to cope with that just meant that you had less time for each task, meaning you ended up with all tasks a bit done, but nothing really completed? Not really fulfilling, is it? Most of us nowadays are required to juggle many balls in the air at the same time. It might be due to starting a business, switching to a new job or becoming a parent. And it leaves us with seemingly too little time to really focus on all these tasks.

To handle all of that, there are two knobs to tune in my opinion. The first one is efficiency, meaning how well tuned your processes are to get things done quickly without loss of quality. The second one is focus, which relates to filtering what tasks are actually important and what tasks can be dropped or done quickly.

Balancing these two parameters is not an easy task, especially if you are already swamped with other tasks. It really comes down to mental models and tools that can be used to break down the complexity of the fine-tuning process. I also think this is not a process you complete once and get done with it but requires constant adjustment. And since I wanted to reflect on my current process anyway, I decided to put it in an article. This way it can help other, and I can get feedback on it, which can hopefully lead to step-function improvements, win-win!

Book Recommendations

The first thing I usually do when faced with a problem is a sweep of existing literature to understand how others have solved the problem. In this case the problem is quite vast, as it spans a whole range of different areas (including mental models, productivity tools, work environment). To not blow the scope of this article I will just list the different books I can recommend:

• "Mindset" by Carol Dweck
• "Can't hurt me" by David Goggins
• "Ikigai" by Hector Garcia Puigcerver
• "Indistractable" by Nir Eyal
• "Focus" by Daniel Goleman
• "Deepwork" by Cal Newport
• "Getting Things Done" by David Allen

My Process

Okay, so how do we start putting all that information into an actionable framework? For me I broke down the problem into 3 distinct steps: Prepare - Execute - Reflect. I use different techniques and tools for each of these areas, that I will outline in the following sections.

Before we jump in, a quick disclaimer on tools: I see tools as an extension of the mind. However, like our mind they can distract and get cluttered. It is important to pick the right tools that enhance your mental capacity, rather than distract it. This can be a difficult decision to make, especially when working in a team. So, it might make sense to take an iterative approach to it and not to shy away from switching tools if you think they are not working for you (even if everyone else is recommending them).

Plan Forward (Prepare)

I usually do my planning at distinct levels, going from the big-picture to fine-granular planning, ensuring that everything is aligned.

10yr Vision: The coarsest level is a 10yr plan, where I outline the vision of what I want to achieve (e.g. build a company), why I want to achieve it and generally the skills and environment I would need for that. I tend to revisit that every 6 to 12 months, but it can be years between major updates of this.

Yearly Plan: The next level is at a yearly stage, which I usually do in December to outline my plans for the coming year. This includes projects I want to start or make progress on and time-boxing my year (e.g. outlining months I want to use for more intense focus).

Weekly & Daily: The final two stages are at a weekly and daily level. At the weekly level I set a specific focus for the week (e.g. ship feature X) and outline behaviour changes I want to implement (e.g. creating a stronger focus on sleep). At the daily level I tend to plan my tasks in a time-boxed fashion. That means that I create a list of tasks on the evening before and then at the morning of that day assign a time slot to every task. This also helps me to avoid spending too much time on a single task (as there are quite a few tasks that can "explode").

Act in the Moment (Execute)

This part sounds rather simple. Ideally, I just execute the tasks one timeslot at a time. In reality there are often distractions and unforeseen meetings, changes or delays that make this non-trivial. There are, however, a few tools that can help with that.

Meditation: The most obvious one is meditation, which includes short 1min breathing meditations to refocus/reset between tasks and longer meditations that help to build awareness for distractions. Both of them can be help with internal distractions (i.e. drifting thoughts).

External Distractions: There are a bunch of tools to minimize external distractions, such as busylights (to signal to people that you are focused), an App like SelfControl (that blocks certain websites) and music/headphones to drown out environmental noise that can interrupt your flow.

Learn from the Past (Reflect)

I see the entire process as fluid, which means I am open to changing it if I see that certain parts are not working optimally. Taking time for reflection is the way to get these feedback signals. To that end I do two feedback sessions: One for daily feedback and one for weekly feedback.

Daily Learnings: The daily feedback session is actually quite short, just going over the time-boxed schedule and figuring out where tasks moved around and why (and which tasks didn't complete). From that I derive a list of learnings on what worked well and what doesn't and try to incorporate the learnings into the next day going forward. Usually this takes around 10 to 15min.

Weekly Reflection: The weekly sessions is a bit more extensive, which includes reflecting on progress toward the 10yr vision & weekly goals, outlining the biggest learnings from the week and listing my weak points that I want to improve. Usually this takes around 45 to 60min.

If you have a team, it can also be useful to do "pro-active reflection" (i.e. red teaming) where you present your plans to a group, and they try to pick holes in it (in the form of "Have you considered..." questions). The hard part here is not to get overly defensive, but rather take the feedback and really think through if you have considered it.

Conclusion

In this article I outlined my general approach for selecting tasks to work on and execute, structured into three steps: Prepare - Execute - Reflect. We also looked at a few of the key tools I use to accomplish these steps. Keep in mind that this is a living process, and I will likely change it over time, so it is just a snapshot.

Was that helpful to you? Do you have other methodologies that you use? I am always happy to get into deeper discussions on this!