8 Productivity tools that help me (and 2 that don’t)

Take this in the spirit of "things I recommend you buy and use". There are tons of available productivity tools. These are the ones that have stuck out to me as worth it.

In order of greatness:

1. “Daily check-in”

This is the single best productivtiy intervention I’ve ever tried. It’s a bit harder to implement because it requires you to have a group of people doing it. But if you have such a group, try it!

Every day I write my to-do list in a public channel on slack that any of my co-workers can see (about 4 other people do the same). I cross things off as I go. I sometimes write a mini-review at the end. This helps make me feel more accountable to getting the things done, less imposter-y, more team-y, and more proud when I do cross things off. It helps a lot.

Bonus to-do list tip 1: I estimate the time it will take me to do something, in minutes, on my to do list before doing it. When I’m done I write the real time. I’ve gotten a lot better at predicting the time tasks take me since I started this habit. It’s helpful that it’s on daily check-in so I kind of get to show off getting good at predicting.

Bonus to-do list tip 2: I am a lot less productive when it feels like I have a lot of choice as to what to do next. I often restrict this by putting my to-do lists in a somewhat arbitrary order but then once the order is determined telling myself I have to do the items in that order.

2. ‘Poms’ with friends, including over video

25 or 45 minute work sessions, with short breaks in between in which you state your goal for the next pom and say whether you made your goal in your last one.

You don't even have to know the people well (you can do it with strangers here), but it’s even better if you do, and it's a great way to stay in touch with people. You can do it in person or over video or even just the phone or text. I have made friends because of poms, and stayed friends with them via poms.

3. Recording my accomplishments every week

Again this works best in a certain social/professional setup, but every week I add up everything I did that week and whether I met my goals, and I show it to my manager. If you have a manager and don’t do this, it’s a good thing to start. The biggest effect of this is making me feel better about my progress, which is energizing. Like daily check-in, it also helps me feel like I have no secrets, which is anxiety-soothing.

4. Tagging emails as 'non-urgent-to-respond' and then clearing them every Friday -- and keeping my inbox at ‘unread zero’.

I don’t really know why people try to reach ‘inbox zero’ - the important thing is ‘unread zero’, where if you haven’t dealt with an email yet it’s left unread. Then you don’t have to click nearly as many buttons, and it’s easy to just search for things in your inbox. If you want to put off emails and respond to them in batches (which I do recommend, for focus), you can tag them and leave them unread.

5. A structured fortnightly planning template

Mine looks like this (edited for clarity). It’s a bit intense but it works for me. The most important thing is separating out the main thing you’ll do to really drive your priorities forward from everything else, to make sure it doesn’t get ignored.

• Main thing I’ll get done to really drive my priorities forward:

• Always/recurring:

• Priority “whirlwind” (stuff that’s not my main focus but is really important):

• Bonus: 

• Day by day:

  • Mon

    • 10-11 blah blah

    • task x (75 minutes)

    • etc.

  • Tues… etc.

6. Listening to upbeat music while working

7. Restricted internet

Not having subscriptions to sites like NYtimes or the WSJ; using Freedom to block reddit; not having the app for Facebook on my phone, not knowing my password by heart so I can't log in on my phone easily; not having accounts on instagram, tiktok, etc.

8. A good bookmarks toolbar

My best suggestions for this: (1) have bookmarks for docs you use for meetings with people you meet often, so that you can easily navigate to them and add agenda items throughout the week or the month or whatever, such that they’re just there when you go to prep for the meetings; (2) create a “working docs” folder where you keep bookmarks you only want temporarily, and clean it out every once in a while; (3) you can rename your bookmarks so the names are really short, so you can fit more of them on your toolbar. e.g. the name of my bookmark for my meeting doc with my manager Howie Lempel is just “HL”.

What doesn’t help me?

1. Habit tracking

I have tried this many times. It feels like overhead and it has never stuck. I’ve just given up on it. I believe it works for others though.

2. Asana, or any other task management system or app.

I just use a google doc I keep in my bookmarks toolbar and daily check-in (as above). Even without daily check-in I think I’d be best off just using the google doc. Other things just seem like a lot of unnecessary clicking.