Productivity Archives - Page 2 of 15

The Wheaton Scale of Productivity

February 25, 2021August 10, 2023 Nik

When you no longer have to work, how do you decide what to work on — and how much you work at all? Most people will never face this question, and so they zone out when others ask it.

Let’s consider a man named Jack. Jack thinks the above question is stupid. He assumes that if he didn’t have to, he’d never choose to work. In fact, why would anyone? Ironically, with that kind of mindset, if Jack came by some money, he’d just spend it all and, ultimately, be forced to go back to work.

Meanwhile, Blair has ventured deep into the world of work. She has studied productivity, time management, and flow. She knows about philosophical concepts like zen and self-actualization. She is thinking about leverage, delegating, and the impact her work makes on the world as a whole. Blair has had jobs where she was happy and jobs where she was miserable, and so, when she hears the above question, she is intrigued.

The reason Jack and Blair can barely have a conversation about work is that they’re too far apart on the Wheaton scale of productivity.

30 Lessons Learned in 30 Years of Life

February 18, 2021February 28, 2024 Nik

Yesterday, I turned 30. When I was 18, I thought by 30, I’d have it made.

My 20s were a long, slow grind of realizing “made” does not exist. “Made” is past tense — but you’re never done! The only finish line is death, and, thankfully, most of us don’t see it until we’re almost there.

Instead of the binary made/not made distinction, I now see life as round-based. You win some, you lose some, and different rounds have different themes. There’s a carefree-childhood season, a teenager-trying-to-understand-society season, an exuberant-20-something season, and so on.

At 30 years old, I’ve only played a few seasons, but each round feels more interesting than the last. If that trend persists, I can’t imagine what one’s 60s or 90s must be like. By that time, you’ve seen so much — and yet, there’ll always be new things to see.

Most seasons last longer than a year, and there’s plenty to talk about with respect to the important, defining decade from 20 to 30 alone, but today, I’d like to do something different: I want to share one thing I’ve learned from each year I’ve been alive.

Your Best Work Is Always Ahead

February 10, 2021April 5, 2024 Nik

In the 1960s, Gene Wolfe worked as an industrial engineer at Procter & Gamble. One day, he was called into a team tasked with mass producing a new product: chips.

The process was divided into several stages, from dough-making, rolling, and pressing to cooking, salting, and packaging. Gene was in charge of the cooking stage. He had to build a machine that would fry an exact amount of chips for an exact amount of time.

Since this was a new kind of potato chip, a real innovation if you will, developing proper equipment was no easy feat.

The chips were wavy and shaped like a saddle. This way, they stacked neatly on top of one another, but it also meant they all had to look exactly the same — and not break. In order to protect each chip stack, P&G decided to sell them in a can rather than a bag, which led to more manufacturing challenges.

In fact, someone at P&G had invented the chip more than ten years ago, but so far, the company hadn’t been able to make all the puzzle pieces fit together. This was Gene’s time to shine.

The Rule of 70/20/10: Do Important Work or None at All

February 9, 2021August 10, 2023 Nik

Ip Man, a Kung Fu movie about the legendary martial arts teacher of the same name, is rated a staggering eight out of 10 on IMDb and considered a cult classic among fans. The movie is almost two hours long, but if you skim through it, you’ll notice something: There’s not a lot of fighting.

Isn’t that what Kung Fu movies are about? Apparently not. You’ll see the master having tea, helping his friends, and struggling with everyday life. You’ll see him muse about politics, about war, and about philosophy. You’ll see Ip Man training and spending time with his family.

Why do people love this movie so much if, as it turns out, there are only three major fight scenes? They love it because each fight means something.

How to Get What You Want by Being Street-Smart Instead of Book-Smart

November 26, 2020September 25, 2023 Nik

There are two ways to be smart: One is to have a high IQ, the other is to be good at getting what you want.

The former contains an element you don’t control — genetics — and while you can read many books to make up for it, maximizing intelligence alone has little use in the real world. Being street smart, however…

In 1862, Mark Twain was stuck in a silver-mining town in Nevada. A notorious slacker, he was quickly fired from the only job available: shoveling sand. His buff roommate, however, hadn’t found work, and so Twain sent him to the mine, telling him to ask for work without pay. After a few days, word got out about the productive “intern,” and soon, he earned enough for both of them — and Twain went back to reading, writing, and eating stewed apples.

Now I don’t know about you, but that’s the kind of smart I want to be. Since it doesn’t rely on intellect alone, being street smart is mostly a decision — a philosophy, if you will. I thought long and hard about what I could teach you that would actually make you smarter, and, rather than facts and figures, all I could see were three ideas underpinning this philosophy.

Here they are. May they help you get what you want and make the world a better place along the way.

1. Principles Beat Knowledge

Neil deGrasse Tyson once told a story about interviewing two job candidates. Both were asked: “How tall is the spire on the building we’re in?”

The first person said: “Oh! I know this! I studied architecture and memorized all the heights. The spire on this building is exactly 155 feet high.” As it turns out, that’s the right answer.

The second person said: “I don’t know, but I’ll be right back.” She goes outside, measures the length of her shadow on the ground against the shadow of the building, and, after comparing the two, says: “It’s about 150 feet.”

“Who are you gonna hire?” Tyson said. “I’m hiring the person who figured it out. Even though it took that person longer. Even though the person’s answer is not as precise. ‘Cause that person knows how to use the mind in a way not previously engaged.”

To Tyson, this is the difference between fuzzy thinking and thinking straight: “When you know how to think, it empowers you far beyond those who know only what to think.”

Principles beat knowledge. Knowledge can be memorized, accessed quickly, and it is useful to have a lot of it available at any given time. Everything you know, however, is nothing but an insight derived from a principle, and if you understand a lot of principles, you can generate any fact you need in real-time — no need to cram your brain with knowledge.

When you hold an apple in your hand, you know it will fall to the ground if you let go because you understand the principle of gravity. A principle doesn’t break. It’s universal. Knowledge, however, finds its limits all the time, because unlike principles, facts change.

If you jump off the spire in Tyson’s example, you will die. You know this. It’s a fact, and it seems so universal, it feels like a principle — but it’s not. It only happens in movies, but if you stood atop the spire as the building was collapsing, jumping off — towards a helicopter, with a parachute, into some safety construction — would be your only way to survive. The circumstances changed, and the principle overrode the knowledge.

Therefore, it is much better to have a few guidelines for how you think rather than many options of what to think.

Knowledge is good, but too much of it can limit our thinking instead of expanding it. The more drawers our file cabinet has, the more desperately we believe that one of them must hold the answer, and so we waste our time pulling out drawers when we could derive the solution — maybe a brand new solution — by combining our principles.

If you want to achieve your goals and make a difference in the world, you must never be intimidated by knowledge, and you must never rely on knowledge alone. Collect it when you can for it might one day be useful, but never let your knowledge trump your ability to think on your feet.

2. Psychology Runs Everything

One of the first and most important principles is that psychology governs everything — absolutely everything. The invisible forces of human behavior shape every decision we make, every action we take, and all of our interactions with others.

Right now, there are over 200 biases twisting your thoughts and perception. Every waking second, we are affected by our instincts, our environment, and the actions of those around us.

I think it cannot be overstated and might be the most important principle in accomplishing anything in this life: Psychology rules everything. You must never neglect psychology, never underestimate it, for its power is near-limitless.

Judges have sent innocent men to prison over bias. Billionaires have been tricked out of their fortunes. Retail empires have been built and collapsed on small differences in perception and a lack thereof.

Money, fame, charity, legacy — whatever you want in life, it translates to change, to transformation, and the most powerful, most sustainable way to enact change is to deeply understand and embrace psychology.

Read some books. Understand the basics of perception, bias, and persuasion. Learn how our emotions affect us and how our minds work. Master, not guess, which of the brain’s many kinks work for and against us.

Whatever you look at in life, consider the angle of psychology: Which behavioral forces are at play here? Why do we do what we do?

Whether you wish to be self-disciplined and run a marathon, create your own board game and sell a million copies, or found a company that will convert 25% of the world’s CO2 into something useful, heed the science of the mind, and you shall one day be successful.

3. To Get What You Want, You Must Make People Feel

Maya Angelou once said: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

In a world run by psychology, an ounce of common sense is worth a pound of theory — and no matter what the theory suggests, humans are, by and large, run by their feelings.

“What do you feel like eating?” “I don’t feel this idea.” “I feel like I can afford it.” Nutrition, business, money — three of the most important topics in our lives, all governed by principles, and what do we do? We listen to our feelings. For better or for worse, this is how it’s gonna be.

It is great to practice rational thought, to aspire to reason and intelligence, but neither will be the biggest hindrance in getting you what you want — especially if it involves convincing other people, and it always involves convincing other people.

Appeal to our natural desires. Make us feel loved. Make us feel strong. Whatever you want, you’ll have to make us feel something to get it.

A confidence coach may have to make people angry, help them use regret as fuel for change. A great writer can make us feel sad, but in that sadness, we may find closure. Others provide simpler pleasures, like laughter, excitement, or schadenfreude.

The first incarnation of Facebook, FaceMash, put two photos of people side by side and let others vote on who’s more attractive. It’s a product built on curiosity and our desire to judge.

Tesla succeeds because its cars look good and feel futuristic. It’s not about numbers or sustainability, it’s about being part of something bigger while still having fun. The benefits are side effects.

Apple is not about glass and microchips, it’s about “having good taste.” You can viscerally enjoy the design of their products — and to top it off, they also perform well. The design “just flows” and the tool “just works.” A trillion-dollar company, built on gut feelings.

If you want to change the world for the better, let self-absorbed humans do the right thing by accident. Make us act in our own interest, and align the incentives so everyone benefits. The same applies to getting what you want, and it all runs on the unstoppable force of feelings.

If Mark Twain’s mining story sounded familiar to you, it’s because it closely resembles Tom Sawyer’s genius stunt of getting the other kids to pay him to paint his aunt’s white-picket fence — a feat depicted in Twain’s most famous work, a hallmark of American literature. That’s what he used his spare time for, and today, we’re all better off for it. We can still learn from his stories.

Academics frequently dismiss street smarts as unethical or lazy. Sometimes, they do so out of a false sense of honor or because they’re jealous of others getting what they want while they don’t, seemingly without hassle. Most of the time, however, they simply fear their intelligence won’t amount to anything in the real world, thus running from the very thing they so desperately hope to achieve.

Smart people realize that being smart alone does not mean much at all. If you want to accomplish things in this world, you need other people to buy into your ideas, and if you can’t do that, it doesn’t matter how brilliant those ideas are. Those people, like you, run on imperfect brains providing imperfect conclusions, many based not on facts but feelings.

Being street smart is the ultimate commitment to being pragmatic, to getting things done, and to understanding the world as it is so we can make it into the world we wish it to be.

Don’t just be smart. Be street smart. Look at life through the lens of principles, psychology, and feelings, and, like the great but laid-back humorist we call the father of American literature, you’ll move with its current rather than against it.

The Thing You Most Want to Save Time on Is a Thing You Shouldn’t Be Doing at All

November 11, 2020August 10, 2023 Nik

In 1902, Remington advertised its breakthrough appliance — the first commercial typewriter — with the following slogan: “To save time is to lengthen life.”

It’s a powerful phrase, and for years, Richard Polt thought it was true. Polt is a typewriter collector, but he’s also a professor of philosophy. Eventually, he came to the following realization: “The more time you save, the more time you waste, because you’re doing things that are only a means to an end.”

Your Brain Is Your Ally, Not Your Enemy

October 21, 2020January 2, 2023 Nik

It’s a myth that we only use 20% of our brain, but I can see why it’s popular: It’s the perfect excuse.

How can I excel if the tools I need to do so are in a place I can’t access? If only there was a miracle drug…

In reality, even a single task can easily demand 35% of your brain’s capacity, and, over the course of a single day, most of us will access all 100% — just different areas at different times.

Still, many a movie has been made about said miracle drug, including Limitless, a film starring Bradley Cooper as a hard-up writer. After he discovers NZT-48 and finishes his book in a day, he makes millions in the stock market and enjoys his newfound life as a genius — until the side effects kick in.

It’s a nice movie to fuel our daydreams, but it also makes for a strong wake-up call because, as Lars van der Peet says in a video essay about the film, “it explores something we are all aware of: The perception that we are unfulfilled potential; that we aren’t doing everything we could and should be doing.”

Our frustration with our brains shows on many levels: You might be angry that you can’t remember what you wanted to say, feel depressed after being stuck on an important project for months, or watch movies like Limitless in lack of motivation to write your novel.

As understandable as these frustrations are, they are born out of misconception: Our brain was never something we were meant to have 100% control over — it is simply a partner we must work with.

There is no exact science on how much of our brain activity happens “below the surface,” but chances are it’s a lot more than what we process and register in a conscious manner. Whether it’s 80–20 or 60–40, the point is: Your subconscious is much larger than your consciousness, and you can’t force everything into the realm of awareness. Even if you could, you’d probably feel overwhelmed and wouldn’t be able to synthesize the information in a useful way.

Your brain is an iceberg. Most of it is under water. It is not your job to try and turn it upside down. Your job is to navigate whatever lies above sea level. Even the small terrain up top is constantly changing, and in order to navigate it well, you must trust in whichever part the iceberg decides to reveal.

“Make your unconscious your ally instead of your enemy,” Lars says.

Accept that creativity requires breaks, and that in those breaks, your subconscious is working for you, not against you. Your mind can process even when you don’t, and usually, it does its best work while you do none at all.

Organize your surroundings. Give your brain every chance to structure what it sends you by structuring your sensory input. A brain fed with views of a chaotic room will only feed you chaotic thoughts. Clarity on the outside, however, breeds clarity within.

Make new connections. Structure and routine lead to insights on the regular, but if they become too rigid, only a change of pace can provide stimulation. In the long run, your brain can only give you new ideas if you give it new input.

Finally, never let a good idea go to waste. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve scrambled for my phone to make a note, and I expect myself to do so many times in the future. Inspiration can strike anywhere, anytime, and it is foolish to think it’ll repeat the favor just because you’re too lazy to take note right now.

Towards the end of the movie Limitless, the main character realizes he never needed a smart-drug in the first place: His limitations were mostly self-imposed. Instead of blaming his brain, he starts using it.

Your brain is not you. It will never define who you are, and yet, you must live with it every day. Treat your brain like a partner: You don’t control them, but together, you can achieve a whole lot.

In that sense, I think the real message of the movie is this: We have everything we need. We just have to work with it rather than against it.

If You Drove Half as Fast, You’d Still Get There on Time

July 20, 2020August 20, 2023 Nik

When he lived in Santa Monica, Derek Sivers found the perfect bike path: A 15-mile round trip along the ocean with almost zero traffic. In his afternoons, he’d get on his bike and race full speed ahead. On average, the trip took him 43 minutes to complete.

After several months of arriving with a red face, a sweaty head, and feeling completely exhausted, Derek decided to take it easy for once. He looked at the scenery. He saw some dolphins. He casually pedaled along. It took him 45 minutes.

At first, Derek couldn’t believe it, but he double-checked his numbers, and, sure enough, he achieved 96% of the result with 50% of the effort. Reflecting on the experience, he writes:

When I notice that I’m all stressed out about something or driving myself to exhaustion, I remember that bike ride and try dialing back my effort by 50%. It’s been amazing how often everything gets done just as well and just as fast, with what feels like half the effort.

A few years ago, my Dad and I used to do something similar: We raced home in our cars. It’s about five miles from the city to the suburbs, and we too used to speed, catch yellow traffic lights, and overtake anyone in our way.

One day, we did the math: If you go 50% over the limit on such a short trip, you’ll save about one minute. We’ve been cruising ever since.

Life is like that a lot. You go all out to be 50% faster, better, stronger, only to arrive one day early at the finish line.

It’s easy to get caught up the everyday hustle. “Let me queue in the other line.” “I can cut a corner here.” “Maybe, I can get them to approve my application faster.” Switching lanes often feels efficient in the moment but won’t make a big difference in the end.

This applies to our daily to-do lists as much as it applies to our biggest goals. If you get the report one day sooner, the company can go public one day earlier — but all that means is that its shares will trade one day extra. On a 10-year-timeline, who cares about that day? No one.

You can stay up till 2 AM and post one extra article. But in your five-year-plan of becoming a writer, does it really matter? Sometimes, it will. Most of the time, however, it won’t. But if you don’t get enough sleep, you can’t see through your five-year-plan. That part always matters.

You can race to your friend’s BBQ and honk and yell at every other driver along the way. Or, you can drive half as fast and still get there on time.

You’d arrive relaxed, happy, and in a positive state of mind. You wouldn’t be exhausted from all the stress that took so much from your mind but added so little to your outcome. This is what Derek learned from his frantic bike rides:

Half of my effort wasn’t effort at all, but just unnecessary stress that made me feel like I was doing my best.

Sometimes, doing your best means having nothing left to give. Usually, it doesn’t. More often than not, feeling completely spent is a sign that you wasted most of your energy.

Energy is precious. Conserve it. Direct it efficiently. Take pride in doing your best in a way that lets you do your best again tomorrow. Life is short. Enjoy it. Don’t burn through it too quickly. Be content with the 96%.

After all, what good are two extra minutes if you can’t use them to gaze at the sea?

The 4-Ears Model of Good Communication

July 17, 2020August 10, 2023 Nik

All relationship problems are communication problems.

Tim says: “The window is open.”

Maya says: “I’m not your butler.”

Whoa! How did such a small interaction go so wrong? Tim said just four words, but, immediately, his girlfriend felt offended. Sadly, exchanges like this happen millions of times every single day. I’m sure you’ve had one.

Maybe, Tim just thought out loud as he noticed the window being open. Maybe, he wanted Maya to notice the birds singing outside or tell her that he opened it for a reason. Or, he really did want Maya to close the window.

Unfortunately, Maya responded so fast that she didn’t have time to consider all these options. Her heuristic-driven brain jumped to one conclusion when it should have thought about many.

We all do this. We speak before we think, and we damage our relationships in the process. Today, Maya snubs Tim. Tomorrow, Tim cuts Maya off. And the day after tomorrow, Tim and Maya break up. How sad and unnecessary.

If Tim and Maya had taken some time to talk about how they communicate, they might still be together. This is called meta-communication, and it makes perfect sense: If all relationship problems are communication problems, improving your communication will make most of your problems go away.

How To Not Be Gullible

July 2, 2020April 13, 2023 Nik

In 1997, 14-year-old Nathan Zohner used the science fair to alert his fellow citizens of a deadly, dangerous chemical.

In his report Dihydrogen Monoxide: The Unrecognized Killer, Nathan outlined all the alarming characteristics of the colorless, odorless, tasteless compound — DHMO for short — which kills thousands of Americans each year:

DHMO can cause severe burns both while in gas and solid form.
It is a major component of acid rain and often found in removed tumors of cancer patients.
DHMO accelerates corrosion of both natural elements and many metals.
Ingesting too much DHMO leads to excessive sweating and urination.
For everyone with a dependency on DHMO, withdrawal leads to death.

After giving his presentation, Nathan asked 50 fellow students what should be done. 43 — a staggering 86% — voted to ban DHMO from school grounds.

There was only one problem: Dihydrogen monoxide is water.

Every day, people use facts to deceive you because you let them.

Life is hard. We all get fooled six ways from Sunday. People lie to us, we miscommunicate, and it’s impossible to always correctly read other people’s feelings. But facts? If we let facts deceive us, that’s on us.

When it’s hard to be right, there is nothing wrong with being wrong. But when it only takes a few minutes or even seconds to verify, learn, and educate yourself, choosing to stay ignorant is really just that: A decision — and likely one for which you’ll get the bill sooner rather than later.

If you know a little Latin, Greek, or simply pay attention in chemistry class, the term “dihydrogen monoxide” is easy to deconstruct. “Di” means “two,” hydrogen is an element (H on the periodic table), “mono” means one and “oxide” means oxidized — an oxygen atom (O on the periodic table) has been added. Two hydrogens, once oxidized. Two Hs, one O. H2O. Water.

When Nathan ran his experiment “How Gullible Are We?” in 1997, people didn’t have smartphones. They did, however, go to chemistry class. Nathan’s classmates had parents working in the sector, and they all had chemistry books. They even could have asked their teacher: “What’s dihydrogen monoxide?” But none of them did.

In his final report, Nathan wrote he was shocked that so many of his friends were so easily fooled. “I don’t feel comfortable with the current level of understanding,” he said. James Glassman, who wrote about the incident in the Washington Post, even coined the term “Zohnerism” to describe someone using a fact to mislead people.

Today, we have smartphones. We have a library larger than Alexandria’s in our pocket and finding any page from any book takes mere seconds. Yet, we still get “zohnered” on a daily basis. We allow ourselves to be.

“Too much sugar is bad for you. Don’t eat any sugar.” Yes, too much sugar is bad, but the corollary isn’t to stop eating it altogether. Carbohydrates are the body’s main source of energy, and they’re all broken down into various forms of sugar. It’s a vital component of a functioning metabolism. Plus, each body has its own nuances, so cutting out sugar without more research could actually be bad for you. But if I’m selling a no-sugar diet, who cares, right?

You care. You should. And that’s why it’s your job to verify such claims. It’s easy to spin something correct in a way that sends you in whatever direction the manipulator wants to send you. The only solution is to work hard in order to not let yourself be manipulated:

Say “I don’t know” when you don’t know. I know it’s hard, but it’s the most liberating phrase in the world. Whenever you’re out of your comfort zone, practice. “Actually, I don’t know, let me look it up.”
Admit that you don’t know to yourself. You’ll miss some chances to say “I don’t know.” That’s okay, you can still educate yourself in private later. Your awareness of your ignorance is as important as fighting it.
Google everything. When you’re not 100% sure what a word means, google it. When you want to know where a word comes from, google it. When you know you used to know but are hazy on the details, google it. Seriously. Googling takes ten seconds. Google everything.
Learn about your biases. Hundreds of cognitive biases affect our thinking and decisions every waking second. Learning about them and occasionally brushing up on that knowledge will go a long way.
When someone argues for one side of a conflict, research both. Whether it’s a story in the news, a political issue, or even the issue of where to get lunch, don’t let yourself get clobbered into one corner. Yes, McDonald’s is cheap. Yes, you like their fries. But what about Burger King? What do you like and not like about both of them?
When someone talks in absolutes, add a question mark to every sentence. James Altucher often does this with his own thoughts, but it’s equally helpful in questioning the authority of others. Don’t think in absolutes. Think in questions.

The dihydrogen monoxide play has been used many times to point people at their own ignorance. A 1994 version created by Craig Jackson petitions people to “act now” before ending on a truthful yet tongue-in-cheek note: “What you don’t know can hurt you and others throughout the world.”

Richard Feynman received the Nobel prize in physics, but he started his journey as a curious boy, just like Nathan Zohner. Like Einstein, he believed inquisitiveness could solve any problem, and so he always spoke in simple terms — to get people interested in science.

He also said the following, which still rings true today: “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.”

Category: Productivity