Productivity – Page 2

Productivity moods

In early 2021 I started registering my own productivity system. The initial idea was just to document my workflow in order to be able to understand the evolution and shape of what I’ve developed over the years that today I do intuitively.

Writing and detailing in words and flowcharts have made me consciously realise the dimension of what I already intuitively did, while also giving me the opportunity to refine and rethink my system. That eternal process of discovery and construction.

I believe that a productivity system is our manner of dealing with a workday. The intuitive way we start, develop and end our day: where I click first, which page I open, what I silence, how I make decisions, where I look for information and how I categorise and process everything that comes to me.

I’m the type of person who needs to feel my feet firmly on the ground to perform. I like structure, method, and knowing how to explain to other people what I’m doing. This trait definitely doesn’t compete with my creativity, actually, it facilitates it. Understanding this was transformative to be able to manage large projects and move towards my life goals.

This need of mine to have a clear structure is visible in my language: I have the habit of grouping behaviours, ideas, and actions into categories. I can easily make associations and connections with things that logically don’t match and harmonise opposites, ambiguities, and contradictions. It’s the part of the process I love the most.

This characteristic of mine helped me to sculpt my vision of productivity and divide it into three categories: Plan, Execute and Organise.

These moods just seem like actions, but to me, they are states of mind. They have different characteristics of energy, behaviour, and result. Without further ado, let’s go to each one of them:

Planner mood

Energy: high.

Behaviour: decision-making

Result: high impact in the long term

Actions: reviews (weekly, monthly etc.), planning, future investment actions such as study and feedback meetings

When you are in this state, it’s the boss you have to call to be at the table. The boss isn’t available all the time, probably a few hours a day. You need to be objective and ask them the right questions and not waste their time, after all, their time is scarce and expensive. Bosses make high-value decisions that will impact the days, months, and even years to come.

As David Allen suggests about the weekly review: you only need to think once a week. That is, when planning you make decisions for the rest of the week, and during the week you only need to execute what was defined previously.

I tend to engage in this mood in the morning when my energy level is highest. At that moment, I carry out project management, review my objectives and goals, decide on the next steps, and also study complex concepts. As far as other people are concerned, I hold meetings where I must mobilize people and convey a vision based on values, or even when I need to negotiate and persuade in favour of something bigger. This mood usually doesn’t last long, in my day I’ve noticed that its limit is a maximum of 3 hours of high quality. Then I must jump to another mood.

Executor mood

Energy: medium

Behaviour: fulfilling what was agreed

Result: medium impact in the short and medium term

Actions: follow the task list and appointments on the calendar

According to the decisions of the planner, the executor follows what has been defined. So with a good job done by our boss, the executor doesn’t need a lot of energy to decide what is a priority or not, they can complete tasks much faster and with higher quality.

The classic advice to make the executor’s life easier is to write the titles of tasks clearly, this is the key to a happy and stress-free executor, for example:

Instead of: “email to the extension of the contract”

Write: “gather information to decide on the time needed for contract extension”

Instead of: “start xpto project”

Write: “gather expectations about xpto project”

In addition to keeping your to-do list and calendar clear and intuitive, our executor must perform better with empty and catalogued inboxes, references, documents, and information. Our next performer does that job: the organizer.

Organizer mood

Energy: Low

Behaviour: putting everything in its right place, categorising and labelling

Result: low, medium and high impact with results already in the short term

Action: emptying and processing inboxes (emails, WhatsApp, Slack etc) and categorizing and labelling files, information, and references (on the computer, cell phone, notes, etc.)

End of the year, Fridays, and periods of big changes are when we see the organizer the most. They appear when everything looks like a complete mess, or when we are out of breath and need to start from 0. But it doesn’t have to be that way. My experience says that you should trigger this mood at least every 48 hours for better productivity.

The organizer’s focus is to facilitate the data for our planner and make the executor’s work more fluid and agile. We have information in abundance, what is lacking is accessing it intelligently, quickly and accurately.

In the GTD system combined with Notion it is possible to categorise actions by energy level. We might start the day with the highest energy activities (planning), then medium energy (execution) and at the end of the day with low energy activities (organisation).

All these modes are codependent. They are like an orchestra. Naturally, these moods merge during the day:

We also replan while executing, it’s normal to change the route and have to think of a new path while the train is already moving.
In the same way, we also organise while we are executing (we take care of the dishes while we cook).
When we are planning, it is normal to stop and finish some quick tasks.

The advantage of thinking about these 3 moods is being able to respect and make better use of our physical and mental energy levels, making the most of our creativity and time. As we know, productivity and mental health are closely linked.

In addition to the advantage of going at your own pace, you can also understand and listen to what your environment and situation need most. It is often impossible to execute without minimal organisation, some people simply paralyse (who can cook in a messy kitchen without washing the dishes?). Probably a full email inbox (organisation) and many pending tasks (execution) prevent you from taking time to think about the strategy (planning), which in many cases is what brings us the most results.

In this way, listening to our body and reading the environment from these 3 moods offers us a clearer perspective of where we most need to act at that moment. Moments of crisis benefit from new planning. Sad and seemingly aimless moments benefit greatly from the organisation, after all, who doesn’t feel more motivated after tidying up their room?

maybe not everyone, but rest might be what you need most

In a toxic relationship with Notion

I’ve always had difficulties handling many productive applications. The volume of loose information leaves me without my feet on the ground. In the pre-Notion era, when I used Todoist + Evernote, I felt that there was no connection between reference files, tasks, and the management of projects. In 2019, I met Notion and since then we have been in a long-term relationship that, at times, was even abusive on my part. Notion was originally not born to be a task and project management app, just a personal Wikipedia, but today for me (and many) it has become the center of almost everything I manage. It is literally a practical and emotional dependence. Notion is currently my second brain, I depend on it for everything, from tasks to recipes and lake house ideas that I have no expectations. In addition to Notion, I also use google calendar, of course.

Below, I explain how my Notion is currently in October 2022. It is certain that in two months my setup will probably be a little different. I adjust something almost weekly. I remove what doesn’t work to make it cleaner, or add some new visualization to help with a specific new project. I remember that when I was doing my master’s, I created lists to manage the contents that I should study and work on, and even today this content management is useful. Notion for me is a living system. It took me about 2 years to get to my setup that I now consider ideal.

Some important observations:

If you do not have experience in working with Notion and Databases, perhaps this content may seem a little confusing. Let’s say this content is intermediate or advanced in Notion.
The evolution of your personal system takes time. Firstly, you need to know understand the platform and know how to operate it. Secondly, to understand the need for your routine and its execution. Notion can be a bottomless pit if you don’t understand your current reality and the need for your current work. You can easily waste more time and energy organizing your system than executing what you really need. Many fall into this trap hole as the tool offers infinite possibilities.
Notion, and any other productivity software, is there to serve us, not the other way around. That’s why I strongly recommend that you don’t coldly copy my system, it may take you longer to understand it than create a new one from zero according to your needs and life situation.

This is my current setup:

Today I work with three databases: Projects, objectives and another general one that today is called “Worktable”. The projects and objectives databases only include an overview of each one, their management can be found in my main database “Work Table”. That’s where I concentrate all the information that comes in. When adding a new page (any kind of content or information) I have this template:

Believe me, you probably don’t need all these properties.

The “Type” list separates my big lists:

1. Inbox

Everything new that has not yet been processed (organized) comes to this list.

Using the extension Web Clipper, in addition to saving links, I also manage the tasks in my email: I save the link and generate a task. So that no task is “loose” in my email box.

2. Worktable

On day-to-day I focus on my “Worktable”, where I can visualize the week’s tasks as a menu, just like GTD prescribes, divided by contexts:

This view also supports any file that I have given a date assigned, so these items appear for me in my “Work Table” on a specific day.

My class notes are saved as “Notes” (which would be the “Reference” in the GTD method) – I assign a date for reviewing;
Information about a meeting that is saved as “Notes” – I assign a date when this information will be important for me to have on hand (e.g. for a meeting or an upcoming event);
For items marked as “Waiting” – I assign the agreed deadline;
“Incubated” items that I eventually assign date;
Content I want to consume on a specific date.

How do I do it?

3. Projects

I use it occasionally daily or in the weekly review to get an overview of the projects. I can see many lists related to projects: notes, contents, tasks, incubate, waiting… etc. Here, I have also a database called “Project Structure” where I have general information about the projects.

4. Areas

Thinking about GTD’s Horizons of focus, here I divided everything by area to facilitate the search, especially for projects and content. At work, I like to perform by the context of the week, for example, Monday: Talent Acquisition, Tuesday: Compensation and Benefits, Wednesday: Culture and Leadership, etc. This vision is very helpful for managing different times.

I have areas that I am not officially responsible for, but I still consume content, take notes and prepare myself for future challenges. If I talk about the subject, or it is within my current area of expertise, I consider it a responsibility, even if that responsibility is just to keep me informed about it.

I divide it into two big blocks: personal and professional areas. This is my professional area:

5. Objectives

Long-term goals and objectives with more than +3 years (GTD horizon 3). Here I also have a different database, just to have an overview of my objectives. I review these lists in the quarterly reviews (when the season changes).

6. Contents

Everything I’ve seen and found interesting to consume later. I associate to what it has to do with: projects, areas of life, goals etc. They can be links, PDFs, images, videos, recipes, series books etc.

Not all images can be saved to Pinterest, not all books are on Amazon. I prefer to keep them here.

7. Incubated

Future plans, dreams, and expectations without any action at the moment. It’s my repository of good ideas.

8. Notes

In these lists, I also save files that are references, the difference from the list of contents is that these references have already been seen/consumed. It is an already made reference, for review only, while the content is “to do” references. Here, I also save notes in general that are not extracted from any content, such as texts written by me.

9. Waiting

This list has no mystery, it’s everything I’m waiting for someone or some task that I can only do on a specific date. If there is something recurring, I don’t put it here, I put it on the calendar. Ex: bills; weekly/monthly review; planning; housework, etc.)

10. Who

At a certain point, I had the need to have a view per person. This solved many problems, as I can gather all kinds of information associated with a person. Example: meeting notes (e.g. one-on-one), some content I want to consume related to someone, pending tasks, projects involving people, etc. It is very useful when we meet with someone, and we have everything related to that person.

11. Archive.

Finally, where everything is , absolutely everything. Those marked as “checked” I delete every 2 years, so as not to overwhelm Notion. Until today, I’ve never needed a file so old that I have already given it as “checked” after 2 years. However, I may rethink this and save it for longer, but the need has not yet arisen.