Tag Archives: Productivity

Days off

I vowed to take my Saturday off studying, I had just submitted my final assignment and ostensibly had nothing to do. I was going to chill out and just take the day off. That was great until I couldn’t help but jump back on R to do some more coding for my manuscript which we’re planning on publishing soon.

It wasn’t because I was bored, I just couldn’t help myself. I realised I had nothing else to fill the void. I realised I didn’t have any hobbies. Being me, I sat down on Sunday and tried to brainstorm what hobbies I should have, which obviously is ridiculous.

I realised I haven’t put any time aside for myself to think and enjoy myself. I need to do more of that, or do less of everything else and have some blank time, not filling every minute with tasks. No conclusion other than my own realisation that there can be such a thing as too much ‘productivity’, which when your task ends, leaves you feeling pretty empty.

Spend your time where it matters

I’ve begun setting aside an hour every morning I’m not up early for work or placement working on the things that are important to me. I started doing this a week ago because I realised that I was just getting overwhelmed with my work for uni and wasn’t spending any time doing what I actually want to do. I set aside the first hour of the morning, before I start the urgent work which is my university study.

This concept came to me in one of Ali Abdaal’s email newsletters where he discussed this matrix.

It is so easy to get swept up in your ‘urgent work’ which seems to be ever expanding, I didn’t like that. The beauty of the urgent work is that it always gets done, as anyone who has done an assignment last minute knows.

This impelled me to sit down and figure out my “important, not urgent” tasks and start doing them at the start of every day. This is when I decided to write 50 blogs in 50 days, because writing is an area I want to improve in, and all that takes is practice. I do this every day I’m not at placement because sleep one of my highest priorities, and not worth compromising.

I feel it is so important that I spend my time where I truly want to and this was another way to do this.

The Two-Minute Rule

There are two things I hate, inefficiency and forgetting to do something. Despite (I think) being pretty productive, one of my biggest weaknesses is saying “I’ll do it later” just after I do something else quickly. With this strategy, I inevitably forget to do it later, leading to the accumulation of small tasks. An example of this is putting my clothes away, which usually takes no time at all, piles up to be a big task. This is very inefficient because it takes a lot more time than it would have, and requires a lot more effort to do so. In the context of clothes and housework type tasks, it also affects my productivity as well because everything is messy, which is well known to disrupt focus.

This was all until I discovered the two-minute rule.

The two-minute rule is simply, if a task takes less than two minutes to complete, do it immediately. It’s so simple but so effective. This has helped me not procrastinate on those small tasks that we all put off doing.

Whilst the two-minute rule isn’t not the most complex, just having it among the back of my mind makes has made such a difference.

Whilst forgetting to hang your clothes up isnt the end of the world, the two minute rule also applies to many other areas of life. Often I think about messaging my girlfriend something she asked me to do, or send an email I have to send, but say to myself “I’ll do it in a sec.”

Famous. Last. Words.

I almost never remember to do it, because, thinking about doing it makes me feel like I’ve done it. This is another area the two minute rule comes in clutch and you just send the email there and then.

What if I’m in the middle of something? What if it takes more than two minutes?

Write it down.

If the task is more than 2 minutes or you really dont have time, make sure you write it down. This safeguards against our poor short term memory and means you wont forget to come back to it later. Often I have been riding my bike and remember I have to do something, or come up with an idea, and rather than stop and type it up, I just say “Hey Siri, make a note…” and speak whatever it is that I have to do.

Whilst this isn’t anything groundbreaking on the surface, it can be so helpful to just keep in the back of your mind the next time a small task comes your way. I’ve found it just gives me a lot of clarity and helps me overcome the minuscule activation energy it takes to do the small task. This not only helps me get more done, but it makes life more efficient because things don’t get messy, and it also helps me not forget things which pop into my head.

This all helps make life just that little bit more productive.

The Untapped Power of The Weekly Review

If you were writing an essay, would you write one paragraph, then on another occasion, write another, and another. Imagine how hard it would be to finish this essay, and make it a good one. The essay would inevitably be incoherent and have no clear direction. If we wouldn’t do something as simple as write without looking back on what we have done, why do we live our lives like that?

I’ve mentioned the ‘weekly review’ previously, I had no idea what it was until probably a year ago. I don’t remember how I stumbled upon it initially but it was listening to Tim Ferriss that made me actually commit to it. I started doing a weekly review 3 months ago (almost) every week and it is probably the highest yield productivity change I’ve made in a long time.

What is a weekly review?

A weekly review is simply a reflection on the week that has passed. I sit down on a Sunday evening and look back through my calendar and write whatever comes to mind. If I’m stuck on what to write (which I was a lot early on), I just recount what I did, then I put in how it made me feel. Inevitably, I get side-tracked thinking of new ideas, remembering a good moment, or a bad moment which I then problem solve.

I’ve recently added some structure to my review with subheadings of “What went well last week,” “what didn’t go so well” and “what did I learn.” Following this freeform section I have a tick box where I am reminded to preview my calendar for the week, then a list to write actions based on the calendar, or more commonly, something I didn’t do in the week prior. The final part is my focus for the week, which can be more important goals or something broader.

It sounds like an effort, how does it help?

It does sound like a lot at first, but it honestly takes no more than 30 minutes at most, sometimes as little as 10 minutes. You can easily overestimate how much you’re able to get done in a day, and grossly underestimate how much you can achieve in a week, a month or a year. The weekly review is a way to set larger goals across the week, and identify the barriers to achieving those goals in the previous week. This reflection helps overcome future barriers, ultimately allowing to to achieve your goals, in a much shorter time frame. The weekly review takes the serendipity out of achieving, you don’t have to wait until you happen to remember that thing you were working on last week. Each week you look back, and build on the week gone by, fastracking whatever it is you want to achieve.

How to start?

The best thing to do is to just start, it’s so easy to look at all these techniques for being more productive and have all the tools for the job but not use them. Imagine you’re a builder and before nailing something together you wait until you’ve got a certain hammer which attenuates force 10% better than another, then you dont want to hit your thumb so you then wait until a gadget comes which protects your thumb. Before you know it, there wont be a nail to hit because someone with a basic hammer has just done it for you. That was a poor analogy but the message is simple, the tools you use are better than the perfect tool. Among photographers there is the classic adage “the best camera is the one with you.” The message is the same, just start.

Writing will be hard at first, but it gets easier after the first few sentences. I promise. If it doesn’t, let me know and I’ll write a personal apology.

Investing in Relationships

Over the past few years there has definitely been a significant increase in the productivity sphere of social media, with the rise of people like Ali Abdaal and Thomas Frank. They are very insightful and have many great tips on strategies to improve your output, but I’ve found this can lead to the pursuit of becoming a machine which churns out study or content for business or social media non stop for 16 hours a day. I love both their work but it can be easy to ignore their advice for achieving balance, which is certainly a trap I’ve fallen into.

In the pursuit of becoming a productivity machine it can be easy to forget to invest in your relationships. My girlfriend told me to have more emotions the other day, “it was like I was a robot” she said. This made me think about the balance in my life. In my mind I was meditating, studying a lot and generally being very productive. I felt like I was on top of everything, but I realised I wasnt devoting enough mental space to my relationships, and this showed in me not showing too much emotion, which certainly isn’t me.

This isn’t a long one, nor a guide at how to be more in touch with your emotions, this is simply a reminder that relationships are arguably the most important thing in life, and producing more content or studying more won’t improve them. It’s important to take some time off, spend uninterrupted time with your friends or significant other, being vulnerable with them, and be willing to divulge as much emotion as you recieve.

Friendships are inevitable with enough time, but they are fast tracked or cemented when you are both vulnerable with each other, when you are willing to listen to their issues but also lay out your own. this is something I’m definitely not putting enough time towards, and am going to focus more on in the future.

Organising your study

It’s currently the night before my pharmacology final exam, I only studied 3 hours today as I felt I had sufficiently studied up until now and felt no need to increase my stress levels by trying to cram in extra information. If you read my first post you’ll know that I work four jobs, have a girlfriend and study full time at uni and I often get asked by my friends, “how do you fit all that in” or “how do you have time to do that”. Hopefully, I’ll be able to shed some light on the techniques I use to make the most out of my days and study as little and as effectively as possible.

This is how a typical to do list looks for me

The first thing I do either the night before or in the morning is, write down the 3-5 things I need to get done that day. This can be on paper, but I like to use sticky notes on my desktop and have 3 sections, Today, Tomorrow and Later, making each point discrete and as specific as possible, ie. ‘study renal pharmacology lectures’ rather than ‘study’.  Not only does it save the time you spend figuring out what you need to study, but it also makes you more likely to actually do the task, whether it be studying or cleaning your room.

Furthermore, when doing this I find if I start with a smaller more specific task which is easy to achieve, I complete that quickly and after getting this achievement I feel empowered to complete more, maybe study another topic or clean another part of your room. The small dopamine release you get from completing a task is extremely beneficial and makes you enjoy whatever it is you’re doing. What most people do though is set vague, large tasks for themselves each day, for example, study. This is unhelpful because not only is it vague, causing you to waste time organising yourself on the day, you also do not get any satisfaction out of it because there is no discrete ‘finish’ to studying, leaving yourself unsatisfied and unfulfilled at the end of the day.

The final thing I do when designing this list is make it achievable each day. I have found that if you set yourself 3-4 tasks each day and are able to complete them all, it’s more likely that you will do the same the next day. This consistency is a key part to being successful, there is no point being sporadic in your studying, you’ll gain the most benefit out of studying consistently each day, rather than cramming it all into one where you fry your brain and feel unmotivated to work the next day. Overall, the most important steps towards reclaiming your days are to make a list, make it specific, discrete and achievable.

A bit about me & what I do

I’m Harrison, I’m 20, live with my parents in Inner Sydney, and I’m studying Exercise Physiology full time at the University of NSW. I cycle to uni or catch the bus in, and often look forward to going in uni, unlike a lot of people I know. I’m a very passionate person and will devote a lot of time to my passions, which also align in my jobs. I’m currently working four jobs, with varying degrees of relevance to my degree and how much time they consume but I love every minute of them all. This is all on top of also being in a committed relationship. This post will primarily talk about the jobs that I do and what I get out of them. My jobs all have different levels of priority to me, which is important in how much time I devote to them every week.

My highest priority is my job as a boundary umpire in the NEAFL, which is the reserve grade for the AFL. I began field umpiring when I was 14, just umpiring the under 10’s, earning $25 for an hour-long game, which felt like I was rolling in it compared to my friends earning $15/hr at Maccas. I got into it in search of a bit of cash and because a few of my mates in my AFL team also decided to join. From there it snowballed, after stopping playing footy in the U17’s I took my umpiring a bit more seriously, which paid off as I was consistently getting premier division games, which is the top amateur division in Sydney, earning $100 a game! Still great money as a 18-year-old, but it was about to get better, at the start of 2018 I was asked to trial for the NEAFL, which I did and luckily made it on the list. Since then, I’ve been selected to umpire in the AFLW, which in its 3rd season was elevated above state league footy in the ‘umpiring pathway,’ making the next step the AFL. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to perform at my best because of knee surgery I underwent at the end of the 2018 season, but this will be the topic of another blog post. I also now coach the AFL Sydney boundary umpires, which is one of my four jobs, but it only takes a few hours a week coaching after my own training and if I have time, observing a game on the weekend and giving feedback. I began coaching primarily because when I was going through the ranks in AFL Sydney I had little coaching and was just learning little bits here and there during games from other umpires. This frustrated me greatly and I always wished that we had a coach to help us with all the questions I had.

My ‘second’ job is an interesting one; when I describe it to people I tell them I’m ‘somewhat’ a physio for a quadriplegic lady, which is close to the truth. I’m part of a small team of just three, all students in exercise physiology and physiotherapy and we do 2 hour daily shifts shared around the three of us. Our sessions are early mornings before business hours typically, so it fits perfectly around uni and other jobs. We do massage and exercise training in order to reduce the effects which inactivity has on joint alignment, and increase the strength and endurance of the muscles. Stella’s story is remarkable, a full C5 quadriplegic, 15 years after her accident is walking with little assistance from us trainers, you can check out her progress and a bit of what we do at @march_on_aus on Instagram.

My final job is at Running Science, a specialist running shoe shop in Sydney, most people would think retail is a waste of time for a third-year uni student but what we do at Running Science is a little different. We don’t treat it as retail, but closer to a health service, with all the staff both runners and students of the health profession. We ask every customer their running and injury history, goals and previous footwear choices, as well as undertaking a brief gait analysis on a treadmill. This has been extremely helpful in enhancing my communication skills as well as further my ability in learning the typical injuries associated with runners and how something as perceptively simple as footwear, can and cant impact these injuries.

Overall, as you can probably assume, I’m pretty busy, I wouldn’t change it for the world but I do have to be careful about what I take on because without careful vetting of what is important to me I’d be working a lot more than I could sustain. I’m a workaholic and I love it, but I have to ensure I don’t overdo it and burn out. All my jobs roughly take up 20-25 hours per week, and full-time university, with 20 contact hours per week and another 15-20 hours spent studying. What may surprise you is I usually get 8 hours of sleep a night, and when you add all that up it leaves me with 7 hours a day of free time, which is remarkable considering how time poor most uni students consider themselves. Often I get asked how I fit everything in, and that will be a topic of another blog post. Finally, I just want to set up a few ground rules for this blog, I’m just starting it to have a somewhat creative outlet which is something I feel I lack and miss having, but I will be posting consistently every week, releasing new posts every week in the hope that someone will find them useful. If that is only one person, I’ll be stoked.