my productivity system
I recently finished reading The Power of Self Discipline, and it’s been enlightening. It talks about managing the discomfort that comes from doing things you have to do and how exercising your self control muscle will alleviate the discomfort day by day. While it didn’t offer tips on creating the ideal productivity system, it helped me formulate and refine my current productivity system.
Discipline is about doing things in the present that your future self will thank you for later on. For example, running 30 minutes outside will help your future self be more fit. Learning how to play several chords on the guitar will help your future self be better at guitar. Spending some time cleaning your apartment will give your future self a more organized and clean space to work in. Instead of giving into instant gratification as many are wont to do, discipline yourself to eat the frog and do the thing that your future self will be grateful for. Delay your gratification for your future success.
The book mentions that Buddhism teaches five mental hindrances to self discipline: giving into the five senses, animosity and malice, apathy and laziness, anxiety and remorse, and hesitation and doubt. Emotions can hinder your discipline by feeding into impulses that will deter you from your ideal self. To overcome impulses, create space between your emotion and your action. Use the ten second/minute rule, label your feelings, and write things down. Focus on your goals and your progress, and defeat any impulses that takes you away from the finish line.
Something that’s been helping me stay more disciplined is creating a productivity system for myself. I’ve started time logging. Using my apple watch or phone, I set a timer to allot time to a given task. This helps me manage my time better. Later I jot down how much time I spent in my notebook, and later transfer all the data to my Notion page. Tools that I use for my productivity system include: Notion, Todoist, Microsoft Outlook, timer (apple watch or phone), and a notebook. I need a notebook to jot down thoughts that come to me, things I need to add to my todo list, and track my day’s progress. On Todoist, I write down my todo items with times I should start the task at. My computer and phone send me a notification reminder, which is a trigger for me to begin the task. I use Outlook to manage my appointments and events, and sometimes I time block. I find time blocking to be a little restrictive, and I prefer time logging to time blocking. But time blocking does help. I have a 2-hour rule, which is I can’t do something for more than 2 hours maximum without taking a long break and switching to another task or else I will burn out. I’ve tried to do work in 3 hour time chunks before, and the next week I burnt out and couldn’t do any work. Lesson learned.
There’s no perfect schedule and no perfect system, it’s all about learning from mistakes and refining your systems iteratively. Life’s a work in progress, and it’s about the process, not outcome. My schedule and to do list keeps me grounded in the present as well as orient myself towards the future.
Hope this post helps! Stay hopeful.
