A quick update: I’m back from my vacation! A month on the beaches and pools of Thailand can do wonders. What a country. I thought a lot about what I want to do with the newsletter in the coming year. I really enjoy writing it, but the weekly cadence became a bit difficult to keep up with. For now, I’ll start with reducing the cadence a bit. I aim for an article every 2 weeks, we’ll see how it goes :) How to have 27 hours in your day5 simple productivity hacks that actually work. The first one saved me 2 hours(!) each day!
A couple of weeks ago, I went out to grab a beer with a long-time friend - one of those with whom you can meet once every few months and still sit for hours. After I shared some recent updates from my life, he asked: “But Anton, how the hell do you find the time to do all that???”. It was the ~10th time I was asked this question by friends/coworkers, so I decided to finally write an article. I confess, I’m a productivity-freak-goal-oriented person. In the last 2 years I:
I really don’t mean it as bragging, but as proof that I treat my time very seriously. I’ve read everything I can find on the topic, and tried tons of methods. Today I’m going to cover the 5 simple methods that actually work for me. Even if you only implement small parts of 1 & 2 - I promise it’ll save you hours each day:
And don’t forget to let go once in a while :) 1. Cut - make bad habits very VERY hardOur biggest time-spender is our phone - 4:30 hours each day on average. I was just a little better, with 4 screen hours per day. I’ve tried to reduce it for YEARS. I’ve installed multiple app blockers, but all of them had the awful ‘request 5 more minutes’ button, which of course I used all the time… I finally figured out that making bad habits hard is not enough. Very hard is not enough either. A bad habit must be VERY VERY hard to do. So I’ve looked for the best app I could find. The monk mode of ‘Roots’ is exactly what I was thinking about:
It lets me target specific websites in addition to apps, with dedicated downtimes. I have 3:
Well, that finally worked, getting me 55 hours back each month!
If you have an iPhone, here is an affiliate link if you want to support me while giving it a try :) (I'll make a few dollars if you sign up using my link, and I genuinely love the product. You can also just google ‘Get Roots’). But Anton, those are not ‘quality’ hoursMost people use their phones ‘in-between’ moments when they feel they can’t be productive anyway. In the toilet, in bed before sleep, on the bus, between meetings, and so on. Let me break the myth of ‘non-productive’ time:
The point here is not to stop using social apps! This whole method is about being INTENTIONAL with your time. If you wish to spend 30 minutes a day scrolling on Instagram and stick to the plan, all is good. As Dorothy Parker once said: A time you plan to waste is not a wasted time. 2. SimplifyOptimize the hell out of the necessary evil tasks. Here are a few simple ideas: In your work:
In life:
3. CombineThe first 2 methods were for reducing bad habits. The next 3 are about how to get more good habits done. Combine is the simplest one. Think creatively where you can do 2 things at once. I became a master of this one when Dan was born 😅 Some examples from my life:
4. Goals that workSome people like daily goals, some plan monthly/quarterly/yearly. I tried all of them, but for me, only weekly planning worked. Without some form of planning it’s very hard to find the motivation to do things in the time that you free for yourself. I have a recurring meeting every Friday, where I think about what I want to achieve in the upcoming week in various areas. I use a simple rolling Google Doc with checkboxes. Here’s a typical week:
I do it on a Friday because I achieve most of it during the weekend, and it’s nice to have 80% checked off by Monday. Check out Michał Poczwardowski article on planning and winning the week. In the work part, I put things that won’t happen unless I push them. Most of the work-related ones are managed using the next method: 5. The Calendar is your best productivity toolThe main problem with task lists and goals is that there is no limit on what you can put in there. When you use a calendar to manage your tasks, and just create a meeting for everything you need to do - you’ll see visually when you planned too much. My next step after the weekly goals is to immediately put each one on my Google Calendar, with the approximate time it’ll take. One of my Enbar’s biggest surprises when we started dating is that I use the calendar to also plan my weekends 😅 I also use it to schedule things planned way ahead. For example, if I need to schedule an appointment in two months, I’ll just put a meeting in the calendar to schedule it as far ahead as I can. That way I have no choice but to do it when the time arrives :) BonusConsuming digital content can take tons of time, and not always it’s the best use of it. I shared the system I developed to do it efficiently:
And don’t forget to let goIf you got tired just from reading about my lifestyle, that’s ok 😅 First of all - it’s not for everybody. When I shared it with my friends, most people told me it’s just not for them. They prefer a slower pace, with much more relaxation. There is also a big benefit in just being in the moment, and not trying to squeeze the productivity out of every second in our lives. That’s what works for me, and I enjoy my life much more since I started to be deliberate about it. I find the balance by going into ‘addict mode’ every few months. Sometimes it’s a stupid game on the iPad, sometimes it’s a Netlix show, sometimes it’s a fiction book series. The last time it was the ‘Dungeon Crawler Carl’ book series, 6 books which I devoured in a week. I read it in every spare second of my life, without doing anything productive 🙃 Content I enjoyed this week
If you found it useful - please hit the ❤️ to help it reach others! I would love to get any comments or thoughts, here or on LinkedIn.
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