Improvements

List of books, tools, habits, routines, tips and tricks I have tested, measured and found useful. I hope you’ll find some of them helpful too.

Ideal week method (calendar & productivity)

September 12, 2016
Key corner stone of productivity is habits. Productivity aficionados are familiar with weekly reviews which are part of GTD. Ideal week method consists of scheduling everything for upcoming week in your calendar during weekly reviews. Everything from work, leisure, exercise, up to and including sleep. This removes cognitive load of deciding what to do at any given time. Helps build positive habits. Nudges you towards productive tasks you committed to, rather then procrastination. What to put in a calendar ? Most obvious answer is events that need to occur at specific times and dates. Stuff like dentist appointments, work meetings, gym, classes etc. With most people this is where the utilisation of calendar ends. However calendar can be leveraged as much more versatile tool. A tool to build positive habits, to evaluate the way you are spending your most precious resource on weekly bases, to plan projects, to automate decisions and more. (more…)
#Blog posts, #Improvements, #Productivity

On Deep work: Rules for focused success in distracted world by Cal Newport

March 12, 2016
Author presents concept of deep work (state of flow). Long stretches of highly consecrated, focused work on cognitively demanding task. Ability to deploy all of ones mental capacity fully. It is deep work that accounts for considerable portion of value in knowledge economy. He then goes on to make excellent case for how contemporary workplace culture actively discourages deep work. Open plan offices, expectation of instant email replies, always on chat clients, social media, frequent meetings, constant noise and chatter. Our brains are conditioned to be distracted. Quick reply to email chain. Snarky tweet, post photo on Facebook, overhearing colleagues discussing a topic and joining in. We are addicted to consumption of small disruptive bites of information or to acting on small meaningless tasks and to the false sense of accomplishment that doing so provides. We end up with decision fatigue, cognitive overload, paying high price of context (more…)
#Blog posts, #Book club, #Improvements, #Productivity, #Science

Year of improvements

For few months now I have been focusing on getting better at variety of things. Overarching goal is to be more effective and productive in professional and personal life. Ultimate goal though is to develop and launch at least 1 product a year. One with relatively realistic chance of eventually generating at least half of my income. All the while still having full time job. It was obvious to me if I was going to pull that of I had to become more effective, disciplined and productive. I though I would start by reading a few books on productivity and business. I was shocked to realise that somehow I have managed to read 3.22 books a week. Mixture of audio(2/3) and written(1/3) books. Total of 29 books on variety of topics since January the 1st. Ashamed to admit that probably I haven’t read that many books in last 3 years combined. I ended (more…)
#Blog posts, #Improvements, #Productivity