101 Productivity 101

CGP Grey
And it’s also why like, oh, I find other systems frustrating. But this is where like you just need to learn what it is that works for you. And so one of the main reasons why I stick with OmniFocus is I almost never use due dates. Like I’m on the extreme opposite end of Mike. In my whole system, very, very few things have a due date attached to them. Because conceptually for me, if there is a due date that’s attached, it has to mean like there’s a real hard external problem that occurs if this due date is missed. I end up doing is i have a system that is primarily based around availability like which tasks are available to me to do right now and and this is where omni focus and our old remember the Milk, are the only two task managers I’ve ever come across that handle this kind of availability centricness as well as they do. So

CGP Grey
So I have that structure. But then the thing that OmniFocus allows me to do by having stuff categorized with their advanced features like tags is to be able to say in the morning when I wake up and I get into the office, What is it that I want to do? I primarily want to on writing tasks or research tasks. And so OmniFocus then lets me just quickly see, here are the writing projects that past Organized U has considered to be the top three that you should be working on. And so I don’t have to look at the whole structure of the project. I can just pull out the couple parts that are relevant to me in that moment. So that’s what I mean by like an availability centric process, or, you know, sometimes I’ll feel like I can just tell I’m not quite in the right mood to write something, but I have recorded A bunch of research questions that I want to try to

CGP Grey
But I really think every newly self-employed person has to have time tracking as a part of this process, because I think there’s a very common experience for people who are self-employed To dramatically overestimate the amount of time, not that they’re working in quotes, but that they are usefully working, right? So this is one of the things I implore to people is if you’re self-employed and so the money you earn is directly proportional to the useful work that you produce, be really strict about Tracking the time that you are actually doing the thing that produces the value. You have to separate this from the concept of in a traditional job where like you’re at that job for a set period of time and like you’ve been working all day because you were at work and Like that is just not the same if you’re self-employed and i think time tracking really helps focus that quite sharply in people’s minds yeah and the reason why I say it’s a horror is because Anyone who has done this universally are shocked at how little of the time that they think of as I’m working is the core value production time of whatever it is they’re doing. And so for me, the example with this is it’s quite clear is time tracking writing. Am I writing a script? And I’m extremely strict with that timer of like, this starts and like the timer can only run if my fingers are moving, right? Or if I’m saying the script out loud. And if I’m not doing those things, like the timer cannot run. You know, if you’re a computer programmer, it should be the same thing. Like, are you actively working on the code is the thing to be tracking, not am I sitting at the computer? And I think it’s just so easy to trick yourself into this. And, you know, especially for a newly self-employed person to feel like, oh, I’m working 16 hours a day. And it’s like, guarantee you, you aren’t. And you just will not be able to have a sense of this. And while like all of work is useful to track, I implore people to really focus on what is the core value production and be super strict about that one. Because everything else is kind of peripheral around it. And in most jobs, you can kind of think about what is the

CGP Grey
So those kinds of like have to get done, but are not intrinsically valuable in and of themselves transition tasks. I’ll use that way or colors that are like for free time stuff is a lot of yellow or green. Being able to see the colors because I can just have a very quick sense of how the day is going. And I find it quite motivating to be like, keep the colors that you like or that represent good things in your life large and keep the colors for things that are not good as small as possible. The most dreaded color on my calendar is black, which is for unintentional time. And that’s where if I’ve started a timer, but for whatever reason, I don’t actually do the thing that the timer said, like, oh, I need to, I need to research some facts about this project, But I got distracted by Reddit. It’s like, oh no, once I realized I’ve been distracted by Reddit, it’s two hours later. And I’ve been looking at like power washing videos, I’ve got to go to that timer and you can just quickly change the project. And so I’ll change that project name to like unintentionality, which means like you didn’t do the thing you intended to do. And this is like the worst way to spend your time. So that’s how I use those colors on a, like on a daily basis. But I’m not very specific with the details of like which project is related to what like i just don’t find that useful or actionable for me and whilst i get it because i’ve heard you mention
Myke Hurley
It a few times it does always make me chuckle about the idea of tracking unintentionally used time because

CGP Grey
I will say if someone does want to run a lot of timers my suggestion, if you’re using iOS is I have the same stack that Mike does, you know, toggle. I’m using timery as the interface for toggle. But the primary reason I’m using timery is because it has amazing integration with shortcuts. But here’s, here’s, here’s like the great pro tip on time tracking. I make shortcuts for all of the various timers that I want to run. And what you can do in shortcuts is turn every shortcut into a little app, a little pseudo app on the phone. So you can say, make this shortcut exist on my home screen. And I just put all of those little pseudo apps in a folder on my phone. So they just disappear. But when I go to time track, I always do it on the phone. And I swipe down on the phone to pull up that little search bar. And you know how iOS has the suggested apps that you should use at any particular time. Because you now have all of your little timers are pseudo apps i’ve found that ios actually gets pretty good at guessing which timer do you want to run when that is clever yeah so i i would Say like probably at this point 90 of the time if i pull down on on the phone to pretend like I’m going to search, one of the top three pseudo apps is the timer that I want to run at that moment.

CGP Grey
Well, yeah, I also think Slack has one feature that I think is particularly guilty of removing siloing and kind of muddying the waters of the Slack. And that’s their general channel. And I think for even in many like business focused Slacks, the general place can become a real hotbed of nonsense that is also like where friends are chatting, but this is also the place Where we work.
Myke Hurley
I can’t imagine what a general room in a corporate Slack must look like.
CGP Grey
Yeah, it must look like madness. The way I have actually set up the Slack that I use for all of the video and all of my related work, I’ve disabled the general channel. Like there is, there is no general conversation because I really do want to try to keep it very strict of like, okay, guys, we’ve got channels for projects. And like this channel is where we discuss like what needs to be done for this project. And if there’s something that’s not directly related to a project, like that’s what direct messages are for. I’m the like this grumpy person who’s like, I don’t want reaction gifts. Like I don’t want all these other things. Like, let’s be very clear. Like this is where we’re trying to get this project brought close to completion. And I just I often think like that general channel. I don’t know. Like, I think that’s why people were like, oh, Slack is so fun because there’s this built in room where we can just like hang out with our friends. It’s like, but yeah, you probably shouldn’t be hanging out with your friends in Slack. You should probably find some other method for that because then now you’re mixing like work and friendship in a weird way sometimes.
Myke Hurley
I think this was just as it changed, right? So like for a lot of people, when Slack first came around, it was like there is a community of people here, right? There is a group of people around a certain type of thing, right? When it first was coming onto the scene, I think it was more like we’re a large group of friends.