Productivity

• Steal the Productivity System I Taught to 6,642 Googlers – Jeff Su

  The video is a bit clicé and Jeff does goes hard into promoting Google Workspace tools but some of the ideas are interesting.

  Jeff suggests a Capture, Organize, Review, Engage system for capturing and handling tasks. Capture the task and organize it with a due date, or tag in a task app. Next review to make sure the task is still relevant, and schedule time to do it. Finally, actually engage and do the task.

  He says he reviews new tasks three times a day but that seems excessive. This method also seems like it would work well for someone in his field of marketing where there are lots of small tasks to handle. I think this system would make it easy for someone to get bogged down in small tasks and lose focus of the big picture and larger projects.

  It also seems like it would be easy to accumulate way more tasks than you could actually do and get bogged down in prioritizing them. For someone early in their career this might work, but for someone more senior I think it would be better to focus strategically on a smaller number of high impact tasks.

• How To Force Your Brain To Be Motivated (when you don’t feel like it) – Daniel Pink

  Daniel Pink gives some brain hacks for getting motivated to do tasks. This is helpful for folks with ADD, like myself, who struggle with procrastination or motivation.

  Much of it is similar to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) techniques like cognitive reframing. For example, reframing from having extrinsic motivation to intrinsic motivation. Instead of thinking “I have to do this task to get a reward” think “I want to do this task because it aligns with my values”.

  Reframing is often easier said than done though. It can be hard to break out of a negative mindset.