Episode 34: How to become more productive

First, hustle culture is real. Social media elevates people who ‘push through’ burnout, ignore their relationships for work, and lack balance in their lives.

You should always listen to your body and choose what makes the most sense for you. You will see improved results no matter what time you wake up, how often you workout, what you eat or anything else social media teaches us to care about.

Part of hearing your body/mind/heart is reducing the noise around you. For me, that meant creating an environment where I am constantly inspired and then starting tasks earlier to stop/start and deliver something within a specific timeline.

For example, on the weekends I often relax with TV or movie until I am ready to workout. Sometimes, I work out first thing in the morning, but it depends on my inspiration. I find that if I am listening to my body (even if that means changing the workout plan or going for a long walk instead) I am rewarded with inspiration. On the drive back home, I often enter a creative flow state where ideas for newsletter topics naturally come to me. Sunday morning I am able to write consistently.

Here are 5 things I have changed that make me more productive each day.

Turn off notifications and turn on ‘do not disturb’

All social media and messaging (slack, email, imessage, whatsapp) are off by default. I turn off badges for all apps (the red text in the top right of an app that says how many unread/unseen notifications you have).

I also heavily use focus modes to ensure nothing unexpectedly interrupts me. Focus modes allow you to choose certain apps (e.g. bank alerts or phone calls from specific people) to override the do not disturb settings for anything urgent.

I had anxiety when I first did this…I was opening and checking all my apps multiple times a day. Over time I started to care less and think about think less about the apps. My phone became less of a distraction.

All my apple devices mirror these workflows and notification schedules.

(Note: if you can’t seem to stop yourself then I recommend installing a distraction app to help you build the discipline).

Clear my inbox

The hardest part of my inbox was sifting through the advertisements to find the newsletters I really cared about without missing important notifications.

I found Superhuman for email helped me a lot with getting the this clarity. While they advertise ‘faster email experience’, what I find really valuable is the ability to create folders (called splits in Superhuman) based on email domains. So all notifications go into one folder. All things that require action go into one folder. All replies to my newsletter go into one folder.

You can actually setup a similar flow in Gmail, but now this app is part of my routine / the cost of change is too high to stop paying for it.

I spend a lot of time reading other newsletters. This is my primary way of learning, so I started using an app that creates an alias to forward all newsletters to. I can then have a dedicated app just for my newsletters without having to resubscribe to the newsletters I regularly read. I personally use stoop inbox (free), but there are plenty of these out there.

No meeting mondays

My role is highly cross-functional. I split my team with technical teams (engineering, product) and customer-facing teams (sales, marketing, solutions engineering) which means tons of meetings. I experimented with my wake up times and having ‘focus time’ blocks at various times, but these either got ignored or I had to ignore them for urgent conversations.

I first looked up apps that could update my focus time blocks based on meetings (e.g. reclaim.ai) and this was nice. As you scheduled meetings, it found a hole in your calendar and automatically blocked it off for deep work.

While I had the dedicated time on my calendar, I found that when I actually got to that time I wasn’t inspired to do the hard thing - write a persuasive doc, analyze a bunch of data, or research a technical topic. I ended up using that time to walk / snack / take a break.

What I finally landed on was a dedicated day with no meetings (as much as possible) to start the week. I put a recurring block on my calendar each week on Mondays and then scheduled out blocks of time to work on the tasks that require deep work (1-2 hours of uninterrupted time).

This has worked 95% of the time. I start my week by making significant progress on my projects and then if the rest of the week gets overtaken my Friday I don’t feel behind or stressed. I carved out the time upfront to do my work. I have found people are also very respectful of the block (it says ‘ask before booking’) and people always ask first.

Pomodoro technique

Pomodoro is one form of time management for tasks. You do one task for a chunk of time (say 25 min) and then take a break for 5 min. You repeat 4x and on the 4th time, you take a longer break (15-30 min). I use this every single day (especially on those no meeting mondays).

I found that when I am trying to concentrate I find myself sitting for many hours at a time and I haven’t actually made much progress. I have been struck on some part of the problem and should have actually taken a small break. When I do take breaks, I start procrastinating by doing other things (eating a snack, cleaning something, prepping for a meal) and suddenly It’s been an hour with zero progress.

Pomodoro helps me a) get more movement throughout the day and hit all my stand goals (iykyk) b) forces me to step away and come back with a fresh perspective. I like to do 60 min sprints with a 5 minute break and then take 30 minutes. I usually time my meals to my longer minute breaks (3 hours of deep work then food). There are many apps and even physical devices to help track your time in this way. I personally like Flow as it sits in the toolbar at the top and can easily be changed from 15-60 minutes.

Exercise and stretches

I started seeing a physical therapist in February and it’s been so eye opening to better understand my body. I often felt aches and pains in my body throughout the day and I always dismissed it as getting older or natural workout pains.

Turns out, it’s tiny movements (few minutes a day) every day that fix this. For example, I learned that when I am concentrating tense all the muscles in my back. This makes my spine extremely rigid (it should have a slight bend when pressed) and causes lower back and neck pressure. I usually pop my back 2-3 times a day and always heard loud cracks up and down my spine. I accepted this as ‘just how I work’ but have come to realize that this is due to the stress of work.

A simple stretch (e.g. cat / cow) for 1 minute once or twice a day has reduced all back and neck pain completely. It’s also helped me be conscious of my posture. The more I concentrate, the more I lean forward in bad back form (hunched over) and the worse the tension in my back becomes.

I tried tons of apps, exercises, and products before landing on these, so it’s important that you experiment. You will have extreme discipline in some areas and struggle in others, supplement with apps/products to help you gain the discipline to do it on your own.

As always, feedback is a gift, and I welcome any/all feedback on this episode. See ya next week 👋.

PS: It took me 3 hours to write, edit, and design this newsletter. If you liked today’s post, you can help me grow by forwarding it to one person with a quick “You’ll love this newsletter. Totally worth signing up.” They can subscribe below 👇️ 

✅ Find all resources here.

📆 Looking to connect? Find me on LinkedIn or grab some time on my cal here.

✨ Special thank you to Gigi Marquez who suggested I start this newsletter 🙏