Productivity: Habits, Focus, Methods

26 Ways to Fix Energy Leaks And Better Capitalize On Your Inner Life Force

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I don’t have goals. I know that might seem a little crazy, but it’s true. I don’t. There’s not a certain amount of books I’m trying to write. There’s not a certain amount of books I’m trying to sell. I don’t have a “number” that I’m trying to hit financially. There’s not a certain number of downloads I’m trying to get ​my podcast​ to or followers I want to reach. I run every day, but I’m not training to run a marathon. I swim a lot (​as we talked about recently​) and bike, too, but it’s not because I want to do an Iron Man. That’s sort of the point. What I want to do is run and swim, what I want to do is write—to me that is the win. I don’t fault other people for having goals—if that’s what motivates you, enjoy. And obviously, companies and coaches need to set goals for their staff and for their team—this is how they evaluate and compare performance. A public company has to have revenue targets because investors demand them. They’re just not for me. I’m much more focused on process. That is to say, I focus on doing the thing as opposed to achieving some particular thing. Why? It mostly has to do with control, that central issue for the Stoics. Most goals are rooted in an external result that’s not in your control. Writing a book is not the goal most people have. No, their goal is hitting a bestseller list. Only you determine whether you write a book or not, but the bestseller list? That’s up to the New York Times. Winning a Grammy? That’s up for the Recording Academy. A Nobel Prize? That’s up to the folks in Stockholm. Even competitive goals like being the fastest person in a race or the richest person in the world—these depend on what your competitors do. The fixation on external results that are not in your control carries a hidden cost. It consumes a significant amount of time and energy that would be better spent doing things that actually generate those results. A musician chasing a spot on the charts churns out derivative work, never finding their unique sound. A speaker fixated on the audience’s reaction loses their train of thought. A swimmer who glances over at the competition or up at the finish creates drag and slows down. Over the years, I’ve worked on lots of book and product launches for people. One thing I like to find out right away is what ‘success’ might look like to them. When a person starts to talk about very specific numbers like “Success is hitting #1 on the New York Times Bestseller List” or “Success is making [$$$,$$$$$,$$$$]” or “Success is selling one million copies,” I get a little pit in my stomach for them. First, because of how random these goals tend to be. I remember asking one guy why he had chosen “two million books” as his number and his answer was because someone else he knew had done one and a half million. He’d just pulled the number out of his ass! (And of course, he never came close to this number because almost no books do). Second, I am struck by what they didn’t say. They didn’t say “Success is making something amazing that really helps people” or “Success is creating something that I’m deeply proud of”. All they’re thinking about is some benchmark, rather than thinking about what it takes to even have a chance at hitting such a benchmark: being present, dedicated, pure-hearted, disciplined, creative, self-aware, patient. Someone who comes right out and says they’re chasing a number, competing against someone else, or needing external validation often reveals that they lack those very qualities. I’m not saying you shouldn’t strive to accomplish great things or to do and be all that you’re capable of—you definitely should. It’s that in my experience, the best work comes out of just that: doing the work. Not in visualizing success. Not in trying to reverse engineer what’s working for someone else. Not in setting a “big hairy audacious goal” as some advise. But in the quiet day-to-dayness of the work. In immersing yourself in the craft, not the charts. In being process-driven, not goal-driven. It comes from loving the process, not from thirst. When I was chatting with Buzz Williams, the basketball coach for Texas A&M, on The Daily Stoic Podcast (​listen here​), he talked about the idea of being an everyday guy: “Whatever it is that you’re trying to do, are you tough enough to do that every day?” he asks. “If you’re basing it on talent, well at some point in time it might prevail, but not always. And so if you remove talent, then it comes down to consistency, discipline, and how you are spending your time.” I’d say when you remove goals, that’s what it comes down to. Do you have the consistency and discipline to show up every day? Are you working on getting better every day? In ​Discipline Is Destiny​, I write about the practice of Kaizen, the Japanese philosophy of continuous improvement. Always finding some way to make a little progress. Focusing on the joys of getting a little bit better every day. This is the secret to being internally driven, to being Every Day. “Just as one person delights in improving his farm, and another his horse,” Epictetus would say, riffing, as it happens, on Socrates, “so I delight in attending to my improvement day by day.” I like the way Sam Altman, an entrepreneur who has helped thousands of startups over the years at Y Combinator and then created Open AI, talked about this idea in an interview with Tyler Cowen. “Strive to be internally driven,” Altman said. “Driven to compete with yourself, not with other people. If you compete with other people, you end up in this mimetic trap, and you sort of play this tournament. Even if [...]

South Island, New Zealand, a.k.a. Middle-Earth If you were to make a list of what you want to get done this week, it would mostly consist of things you have to do. Get groceries. Book a hair appointment. Get back to so-and-so. Read that health and safety thing for work. If you were to make a list of things you

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“Procrastination is a thief of time.” ― Charles Dickens Procrastination is always a battle for me. Of course, I’m not alone in my struggle. Studies report that 80%-95% of us struggle with procrastination at some point in our lives. At its heart, procrastination is the act of unnecessarily postponing decisions or actions. Fuschia Sirois sums up […]

Scientists have long known the mental and creative benefits of total absorption in an activity. But what causes it, and how can we achieve it?

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Timeshielding allows you to protect blocks of time in your calendar for what matters to you, with no specific task list. This could be for research, reading, creative brainstorming, or even just doing nothing. Because timeshielding feels more fun than timeboxing, you are less likely to ignore the blocks in your calendar.

Do you ever find yourself actively seeking distraction from what you’re working on? You know what you’re supposed to be getting on with, but instead you open up a new tab, reach for your phone, or start cleaning your home.

Scientists have long known the mental and creative benefits of total absorption in an activity. But what causes it, and how can we achieve it?

Monotasking, also referred to as single tasking, is the act of working on one task at a time, instead of attempting to work on multiple tasks at once.

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The Curiosity Chronicle has quickly become one of the most popular newsletters for growth-minded individuals in the world. Each week, subscribers receive a deep dive that covers topics ranging from growth and decision-making to business, finance, startups, and technology. In addition, subscribers receive The Friday Five, a weekly newsletter with five ideas curated to spark curiosity headed into the weekend.

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Graham Weaver, Lecturer at Stanford Graduate School of Business and Founder of Alpine Investors, shares four ways to live an asymmetric life as part of the GSB 2023 Last Lecture Series. If you would like to follow Graham Weaver and see more content like this, you can subscribe to his YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@grahamcweaver

Explore General Discussion space in Productivity Lab

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Hello Nessers, Today, let's chat about managing our time better.  We all have lots of interests and things we want to do, but finding time for everything can be tough.  How do you decide what to prioritize? And what strategies or tools do you use to...

(a rumination to encourage myself to just FREAKING finish this dang enormously complicated project I'm building already)

What gets in the way of creating incredible focus? In this video, Leo dives in to the less obvious blockers.