Optimize These 3 Areas in Your Life for Highest Productivity
I'm a software developer, designer, and entrepreneur. I'm the co-founder of Asana, team productivity software that many great companies e.g. Uber, Pinterest, Dropbox use to run their companies. Back when I was an engineering manager at Facebook, I designed the internal team productivity tool that the company still relies on. Suffice it to say, I've been obsessed with productivity for a long time. Here are the tips that I've found essential to my creative output. Each tip relates to optimizing one of three areas your environment, your mind, and your process. Turn off all distractions. The verdict is clear "multitasking" makes people feel more productive, but research shows that it makes us less productive. The temptations of email are strong. But frequent interruptions make us dumber and it takes much longer than expected to get back on task. So when it's time to focus,, Find your flow time. If your day is constantly interrupted by meetings, it's very difficult to get into flow, a state where you're really jamming and go deep on complex tasks. Master your tools. If you use a computer all day, every time you reach for your mouse, it slows you down a little, and you lose a little bit of flow. You want to interact with your computer at the speed at which you think. Doing so requires learning the keyboard shortcuts of the software you used most. One of my favorite books on this topic is Tony Schwartz's The Power of Full Engagement Managing Energy, Not Time, is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal. Even the book's name is a powerful reminder. Take regular breaks. Common sense tells us that the more time we spend working, the more work done we'll get done. But that's just not true. Humans are not robots. Our minds need time to recharge. Research suggests that a 15-minute break every 90 minutes is a good rule of thumb for accomplishing more by doing less. Meditate. Here's how I picked up a daily habit. Take care of your body.  Vegetarian DHA 1000mg daily  Olive oil 1tbsp daily  Alpha-lipoic acid 600mg daily, 30minutes before meals  Coconut oil Virgin, organic 1 tbsp in morning  Pterostilbene 50mg morning  evening  Sulforaphane 30mg morning  evening  Curcumin 200mg morning  evening  Green tea extract 200mg morning  evening, Overcome procrastination by facing discomfort. I don't procrastinate because I'm lazy I procrastinate because my highest priority task makes me subtly or not-so-subtly uncomfortable. When this happens you should, Get clarity of plan. A lot of un-productivity arises from a lack of prioritization. It being unclear what you actually need to do to achieve your goal, and what's highest priority. Buddy up. Some people love working alone, but, for complex tasks, I generally find it painful and prone to distraction. Publicly commit to a deadline. Harness peer pressure to your advantage. If an important task doesn't have a natural deadline, I'll tell people confidently, "I will send you a copy by end of day Friday." Now I don't want to look ridiculous in front of my teammates, so I will naturally make damn sure it's ready for them by Friday. Use software to track your work. Unsurprisingly, I believe Asana is the best place for this. Not only does it keep track of your own to-do list it also manages the flow of work among the entire team, so you don't need endless meetings to stay on the same page. And it keeps the conversations alongside the work, so you're not constantly wading through emails to get the information you need. Take time to reflect. Budget just a few minutes at the end of each day, and consider what went well and what went less well. Are there improvements you could make in your workflow next time? If every day you could get 1 more efficient, then by the end of the year you'd be 15x as productive.