My Productivity Stack

A productivity stack is a collection of tools and systems to organize one’s work and life. My productivity stack consists of four systems. Goal setting & tracking, Task management, Time management, and Knowledge management. In the center of all this is your habits. No system will work by itself. You need to develop routines and make it a habit to stick with it. In this article, we are going to explore each system individually and how it all ties together to make you productive.  

Goal Setting & Tracking 

For any strategy to work, you need to plan first and then execute it well. When it comes to productivity, goal setting is your planning phase. Without knowing where you want to go, you may not find your way around. You will be unable to anticipate the obstacles on the way. And you may never reach the destination. Writing down your objects will bring clarity to your life. You will then march forward to your destination. 

Setting Goals: I do an annual review at the end of each year. There are two purposes to it. The first is to reflect on the past year. Celebrate the winners and to learn from the losers. The second is to look ahead and plan for the year. Identify the areas of your life where you want to see improvements. Health, Finance, Relationship, Travel, Learning new skills, and Work are the common areas you can pick. Write down one or two goals for each area. Identify projects with an end date for each goal. 

Reviewing Goals: Reviewing the goals regularly is as important as setting the goals. Reviewing the goals often will help you avoid falling behind on projects. I review all of my projects once a month. I also do a quarterly review of all my goals. Having an accountability partner also helps to be on track. I publish my review on my website to keep myself accountable. 

Task Management 

“You don’t rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” 

“Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress.”

James Clear

Many people fail to achieve their goals due to a lack of systems to execute on the goals. Task manager is one such system to help you identify action items for each project and keep you on track to achieve your goals.  

Getting Things Done – GTD: I use GTD as my task manager. GTS is an extensive task management system. It’s a five-step process to collect, process and organize all the tasks before doing any task. 

• Step 1 – Gather all your tasks in one place called Inbox. 
• Step 2 – Is it actionable? If not, trash it. File it as a reference or move it to someday bucket. 
• Step 3 – Assign project and task. Do it if you can get it done in under 2 minutes. If not, try to delegate it. Else defer it for later time. For the deferred tasks, assign priority, duration, energy, and context.  
• Step 4 – During the daily review, pick the tasks from the deferred list to be worked on for the day. During the weekly review, go through all the steps to collect, process and organize the tasks. 
• Step 5 – Do It. From the deferred list, identify the task based on the filters. What is the priority? How much time do I have? How energetic am I? And what tools do I need? 

You may think it is an overkill to maintain such an extensive system and a simple to-do list will do this job. Think again. GTD will help you identify all your tasks in one place. It will keep track of all the projects and related tasks from initiation to its completion. It will free your brain from remembering what to do next, help you prioritize tasks and a lot more benefits to it. Overall, it will save you a ton of time in the long run.  

Time Management

The task manager will take care of identifying the right tasks for you to work on. But you need to allocate your time wisely to get those tasks done. Time management is allocating the right amount of time to the right tasks. 

In this age of the internet, it is easy to get lost in the sea of information. Hundreds of emails and thousands of social media posts will consume most of your time. Also, it is hard to focus on one thing when the notification keeps buzzing on your phone. 

How not to get distracted and focus on the task in hand? Below are some ways I manage my time and focus on the task in hand

1. Work in blocks of time – I work in 45 minutes intervals and 15 minutes of break. I use the Pomodoro timer to keep track of the flow states and break. 
2. Flow states – Pick your best time of the day and get into a flow. Work on high leverage tasks during these times. Low leverage tasks like checking emails should be done during the later part of the day when your energy level is low. 
3. Break time – It is important to not work during the break time to avoid getting distracted during the flow state. I use my break time to check twitter and slack. 
4. Batch emails – Check emails in batches. I check 4 times a day. Morning, before lunch, after lunch and in the evening.
5. Notifications – Turn off all the notifications. My phone will alert me only when there is a call from a contact I have saved.
6. Track your online time – There are many apps out there to track your online time both on your computer and phone. During the weekly review, check out the usage stats for the week to cut down on the junk time 
7. Track your offline time – It is important to track offline time. Make a note of what you are doing from what time to what time. During the weekly review, go through the note and make adjustments.

Personal Knowledge Management

We are in the information age. We consume a ton of information via social media, articles, podcasts, books and so many other sources. Our brain can only remember so much. We also suffer from recency bias where we remember only the most recent events and incidents. How to remember what we consume? How to retrieve this information when we need it? 

A Personal Knowledge Management system is the answer. The function of a PKM is to store anything from notes to documents and reference materials. And to retrieve the information when you need it without remembering anything. 

1. Build a Library – We consume so much but we rarely retain what we consume. Save everything you consume into a library. Collect all the articles and books you read, podcasts you listen to and the videos you watch. It will be easy for you to search and find out what you are consuming. 
2.  Progressive summarization – It is important to take notes and store it somewhere so that you can access it when you need it in the future. Progressive summarization is a concept to take  
3. PARA(Project Area Resource Archive): I use PARA as my knowledge management system. Organize your environment to follow the same structure everywhere. Areas, Projects, Resources, and Archive. Save your content to appropriate folders every time. 

Habits 

“Success is the product of daily habits—not once-in-a-lifetime transformations.” – James Clear

It doesn’t matter what your goal is; what kind of system you create; if you do not develop daily habits, you are going to fail to achieve your goals. Or you will give up on your systems. It is critical that you develop routines around your goals and systems. I highly recommend James Clear’s Atomic Habits book if you want to learn about habits and routines. It is the most practical book I have read to develop good habits and break the bad once. The following are the habits I have developed around my productivity systems. 

1. Goals – Schedule your monthly and quarterly reviews on the calendar.
2. Goals – Publish the monthly review of my goals to the blog. This helps me to be accountable. 
3. Task Manager –  Do not work on any task without going through the GTD process. 
4. Task Manager –  Do not put anything back from the ‘Do It’ bucket back into the ‘Deferred’ bucket. 
5. Task Manager –  Schedule the daily and weekly review on the calendar.
6. Task Manager –  Empty my containers including my mind during the daily review.
7. Time Management  –  First complete the three tasks identified for the day.
8. Time Management  –  Work with Pomodoro timer. 
9. Time Management  –  Go on a ‘Do Not Disturb’ mode for at least 3 hours a day. 
10. Knowledge Management  – Anything Information I consume, first goes to my library. 
11. Knowledge Management  – Do not consume information without taking notes. 

From goals, we got down to tasks and then to time management to get things done in a day. Storing all the information you consume into your second brain will help you connect the dots and come up with new thoughts. Finally, it all comes down to what kind of habits you build around your day. This is how my productivity system looks like now. What does your productivity system look like?