3 Essential Productivity Hacks To Live By
How I hacked my routine to increase productivity and wellbeing
I used to have this recurring dream where I’m peeling onions and I was content doing that until I looked up. Towering above me was a mountain of onions.
Let’s ignore the fact that most of these onions would have gone bad by the time I got to peel them. This is a dream, and the normal onion-decay rules don’t apply here.
In reality, what hung over me wasn’t a pile of onions, it was a milestone. I was so hung up on milestones that they haunted me. One such milestone I had was to write and draw my first graphic novel.
While I did end up finishing that book I felt like, in the end, I just spat it out in spite. And I wasn’t happy with how it turned out. Plus, I was exhausted and fed up. I was also close to my third burnout so something had to change.
What I needed was a change to my mindset.
1) Embrace the journey
Milestones are not healthy.
This was further driven home when I read Jurgen Wolff’s excellent book ‘Focus: Use the Power of Targeted Thinking to Get More Done’. He mentioned milestones as a fallacy, too. And how we beat ourselves up when we don’t meet them (we most often don’t).
You see, as depressing as it might sound, the work is all there is. Life is all about peeling onions, so it’s best to enjoy yourself doing it. There’s really no point worrying over how much is left to do.
An average human will take around 500 million breaths in their lifetime. Imagine if we were to obsess over how many breaths we had left to breathe? Chances are, the quality of our breathing would suffer just thinking about it.
The point is, when we worry about milestones, we divert mental energy away from the tasks at hand.
As a result, I found it important to take each day as it comes. Rather than worrying about output, I’m instead invested in the “now” —i.e. my process of working and creating.
So, I put aside milestones and instead found ways to make work more enjoyable. I created a morning routine I looked forward to. I gave myself rewards for meeting my less-intimidating daily goals (more on this later).
Note: I recently watched the Pixar movie ‘Soul’ and it had a similar message. So watch that film for confirmation of this!
While this mind-shift change was important, on its own it's not enough to increase productivity. For that, I need to find an alternative to milestones.
2) Process flows
I needed to be creative and produce work whether I feel like it or not. It didn’t matter if I was working on a story or an article. I needed (and still need today) to be creative “on-tap”.
During the lockdown, I ran an experiment on my son (yes, I’m that kind of father). I got him to draw Obi-Wan Kenobi, first by looking at a final drawing and trying to replicate it. And then by following a series of steps from YouTube to reproduce the drawing.
The goal was not to draw a great looking Obi-Wan, but rather to create something as close to the original as possible.
Here were the results (on the right is what he was trying to replicate).
Without a process:
With a process:
Remember, the goal was to create something which resembled the original source — it was not to freestyle. We can see how much closer to the original he got once he followed a process.
A press is defined by thefreedictionary as:
‘A series of actions, changes, or functions bringing about a result.’
The power of a good process should not be underestimated. In order to create, again and again, it’s important to have a process that breaks the work into smaller tasks that you can do.
This way you can work whether inspiration hits you or not.
If you really dislike the term “process”, just call them “workflows” instead!
To help create my processes, I referred to Jurgen’s book again. He defines the concept of a “smart goal” as a replacement for milestones. These are smaller, more achievable tasks that can be completed in a limited amount of time. Maybe over the duration of a Pomodoro.
These smart goals compound on each other to create larger and larger outcomes — what we usually think of as a milestone.
My processes are very much work-in-progress. I constantly tweak workflows for writing, editing and producing comics and articles. This way, I can ensure I’m giving myself a chance to learn and improve as I go.
All these “workflows” or “processes” are well-documented, so wherever I am in the stages of a given project, there’s never any doubt what my tasks are and how I should go about completing them.
If there were steps in the process I didn’t like doing, I tried to find ways to enjoy myself doing it (as per my previous hack). If I really found it bereft of enjoyment, I’d consider delegating the tasks or create automated scripts to do this (everyone should learn Python, by the way).
Now that I have the process and workflows defined, next is to make sure I actually sit down and do the work…
3) Reduce friction to start working
Ideologies and workflows are great, but useless unless we’re able to put them to use. It’s important to actually sit down and “do” the work.
However, our lives are full of distractions. We have the internet, mobile phones, ‘The Queen’s Gambit’ (still not seen it, by the way), and families to distract us. It’s a wonder we get anything done at all!
This is why I found it important to reduce friction to get started working.
With that in mind, I open all relevant folders on my computer the night before. I write notes detailing what I need to be doing when I sit down for work. I pick the tasks which are the easiest to get started on — tasks where I don’t need to think much.
I’m usually half asleep when I start working, so clearly documented processes are important for me. Once I get warmed up, I can start tackling bigger, more energy-intensive tasks.
I also use Tiago Forte’s PARA system as an organizational methodology. This means only keeping my “currently active” projects in a specific folder. This not only increases findability but also helps reduce distraction — there are no other folders to divert my attention.
Summary
And that’s it! A simple mind-shift change, a good process, and reducing friction has done wonders for my productivity.
It’s helped me write numerous graphic novels, each one more ambitious in many ways than the other. I’m also happy and content while working. For me, the importance of improving my productivity is not purely to achieve more; it’s also to protect myself from burnout.
A happy side-effect is that I am actually producing more than I ever have before.
I hope you found this useful. I’d love to hear your thoughts and hacks you’ve found useful.
I’m Iqbal Ali. I write comics. You can sign up for my newsletter here and receive free books and stuff!
I’m also a co-founder of Sitemoni, a website monitoring app, a swiss-army-knife of monitoring tools for websites. Currently in beta and free to use!
Here’s my LinkedIn if you want to connect. Or follow me here on Medium — probably the easiest option.
