Manage Your Day-to-Day
Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus, and Sharpen Your Creative Mind (The 99U Book Series)
If you’re looking to optimize your day-to-day-productivity, this collection of wisdom from some of the world’s leading creative gurus via 99U is a fantastic place to start. Big Ideas we explore include the importance daily routines, the most important thing you can do to boost your productivity, how screen apnea leads to things you don’t want and why rats love to check email.
Big Ideas
- Daily routinesAre where it’s at.
- Creative vs. ReactiveHow do you start your day?
- Wealth of information —> Poverty of attention—> Poverty of attention.
- Multitasking vs. Task switchingTask switching is suboptimal.
- 9.8 billion hours and 4.8 yearsOf TV viewing.
- Screen apneaYou holding your breath?
- Rats + EmailPress the lever!!
- Sleep + UltradiansBake in recovery to build capacity.
“Taking stock of this challenging new landscape, 99U’s Manage Your Day-to-Day assembles insights around four key skill sets you must master to succeed: building a rock-solid daily routine, taming your tools (before they tame you), finding focus in a distracted world, and sharpening your creative mind.
Dedicating a chapter to each of these focus areas, we invited a group of seasoned thought leaders and creatives—Seth Godin, Stefan Sagmeister, Tony Schwartz, Gretchen Rubin, Dan Ariely, Linda Stone, Steven Pressfield, and others—to share their expertise. Our goal was to come at the problems and struggles of this new world of work from as many angles as possible.
Because we each have a unique set of strengths, weaknesses, and sensitivities, it is impossible to prescribe a single approach that will work for everyone. The right solution for you will always be personal—an idiosyncratic combination of strategies based on your own work demands, habits, and preferences.
So rather than lay out a one-size-fits-all productivity system, we provide a playbook of best practices for producing great work. Our hope is that the insights, taken together, will help you shift your mind-set, recalibrate your workflow, and push more incredible ideas to completion.”
~ Jocelyn K. Glei from Manage Your Day-to-Day
If you’re looking to optimize your day-to-day-productivity, this is a fantastic place to start.
The book is a great collection of mini-chapters from some of the world’s leading thought leaders on productivity—many of whom we’ve featured, including Steve Pressfield, Cal Newport, Todd Henry, Tony Schwartz and others. (Get a copy here.)
This is the first in a series of 99U books. If you’re not familiar with 99U yet, check out their site. Basic idea: As Thomas Edison told us, genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. 99U helps us with that 99% of actually doing the work and executing.
The book is packed with Big Ideas on the four domains of day-to-day excellence: 1) Building a rock-solid routine, 2) Finding focus in a distracted world, 3) Taming your tools, 4) Sharpening your creative mind.
I’m excited to share some of my favorite Ideas so let’s jump straight in!
Download MP3
Download PDFOur individual practices ultimately determine what we do and how well we do it. Specifically, it’s our routine (or lack thereof), our capacity to work proactively rather than reactively, and our ability to systematically optimize our work habits over time that determines our ability to make ideas happen.
Get the Book
Listen to the PodcastDaily routines
“Woody Allen once said that 80 percent of success is showing up. Having written and directed fifty films in almost as many years, Allen clearly knows something about accomplishment. How, when, and where you show up is the single most important factor in executing your ideas.
That’s why so many creative visionaries stick to a daily routine. …
Truly great creative achievements require hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of work, and we have to make time every single day to put in those hours. Routines help us do this by setting expectations about availability, aligning our workflow with our energy levels, and getting our minds into a regular rhythm of creating.
At the end of the day—or, really, from the beginning—building a routine is all about persistence and consistency. Don’t wait for inspiration; create a framework for it.”
Looking for the #1 Idea on how to optimize the 99% side of the equation?
Here it is: “How, when, and where you show up is the single most important factor in executing your ideas.”
That echoes the wisdom from the last Note I worked on, John Maxwell’s 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth. Here’s how he puts it: “You will never change your life until you change something you do daily. That means developing great habits. Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishments, and that bridge must be crossed every day. Over time that daily crossing becomes a habit. And ultimately, people do not decide their future; they decide their habits and their habits decide their future. …
What are you doing daily that needs to change? What needs doing? Maybe more importantly, what needs undoing? Advice columnist Abigail Van Buren quipped, ‘A bad habit never goes away by itself. It’s always an undo-it-yourself project.’ What are you willing to change doing today in order to change what you will be doing tomorrow?”
Let’s keep it simple: What are you doing daily that needs to change?
My answer: I need to change when I go online. I currently don’t turn on my Internet until after I work on a Note/read a book first thing in the morning. (I’m typing this at 5:19 AM on a Friday morning.) But, to hit some targets I’m really excited about, I’m going to push online time even further back in the day—after I’ve executed both my AM1 and AM2 time blocks. Exciting.)
Your answer: ________________________________________________________
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The most important change you can make in your working habits is to switch to creative work first, reactive work second.
Creative vs. Reactive
“The most important change you can make in your working habits is to switch to creative work first, reactive work second. This means blocking off a large chunk of time every day for creative work on your own priorities, with the phone and email off.” ~ Mark McGuiness
So, the #1 thing we can do to boost our productivity is to change something we do daily. Got it.
And… According to Mark McGuiness, the #1 thing we can change daily is to make our CREATIVE work FIRST and our reactivework second.
In other words, STAY OUT OF EMAIL until you’ve done something truly creative.
This thought is echoed by a brilliant section featuring a Q&A with Dan Ariely who tells us:“So if your e-mail is running and it is telling you that a message is waiting for you, that’s going to be very hard to resist. In your mind, you’ll keep thinking about what exciting things are waiting for you. Now, if you never opened your e-mail, you would do much better.
It would probably be best if managers went to the IT department and asked them that e-mail not be distributed between eight and eleven every morning. The idea that the best way to communicate with people is 24/7 is not really an idea about maximizing productivity.”
I love that vision of an IT department preventing emails from going out between 8 and 11.
And, of course, that’s *never* going to happen.
So, it’s up to us to block off that time and do our important creative work!
Remember: Time blocks, according to Gary Keller and Jay Papasan in The ONE Thing, are our #1 productivity power tool. And, according to a ton of other brilliant thinkers, we need to match our energy to our task. For almost all of us, our best energy is in that 8-11 morning slot. Let’s block out that time and use it wisely!!!!
The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say ‘no’ to almost everything.
The artist who aims at perfection in everything achieves it in nothing.
Wealth of information —> Poverty of attention
“In 1971, renowned social scientist Herbert Simon observed, ‘What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.’
In the decades since Simon’s visionary statement, the amount of information that we’re confronted with on a daily basis has grown exponentially. Open-plan offices have brought the buzz of other people’s activities into our workspaces. The Internet has provided an infinite source of distraction right inside our primary workstation—the computer. And smartphones have made the allure of new information available anytime, anywhere.
Amid this constant surge of information, attention has become our most precious asset. To spend it wisely, we must develop a better understanding of how temptation works on our brains, cultivate new strategies for enhancing self-control, and carve out time to truly focus on big, creative tasks.
In a world filled with distraction, attention is our competitive advantage. Look at each day as a challenge—and an opportunity—to keep your eye on the prize.”
That’s the preface to the second section on Finding Focus in a Distracted World.
First, let’s re-read this:“What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”
And, again, Simon wrote that in 1971 (!!)—decades before the amount of information available via the Internet + Smartphones exploded exponentially.
A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.
The more shallow information we expose ourselves to, the more we papercut our attention and limit our ability to truly focus deeply.
In his great book Silence (see Notes), Thich Nhat Hanh tells us our minds “chew on” this sensory food long after we consume it. (Have you ever noticed the replaying of salient information in your mind long after you consumed it?)
Remember: Attention is our most valuable asset—not just for a “competitive” edge in the marketplace but, much more importantly, for our own well-being. Let’s take care of that asset.
Multitasking vs. Task switching
“Studies show that the human mind can only truly multitask when it comes to highly automatic behaviors like walking. For activities that require conscious attention, there is really no such thing as multitasking, only task switching—the process of flicking the mind back and forth between different demands. It can feel as though we’re super-efficiently doing two or more things at once. But in fact we’re just doing one thing, then another, then back again, with significantly less skill and accuracy than if we had simply focused on one job at a time.”~ Christian Jarret
As we’ve discussed, multi-tasking is a MYTH.
At best, we are task switching—flicking our brains from one shallow activity to another—taking longer to do each task while doing each less effectively. That’s a great way to get a jolt of stimulation and a really poor way to optimize productivity.
Christian cites research showing that students who read a textbook while using Instant Message technology take 25% (!) longer to read than those who simply focus on reading. (25%!)
He tells us: “Whatever the specific arrangement, whether it’s reading plus IM or writing plus TV, the end result is the same—performance quality suffers and all activities take longer to do than they would have if a single task has been the sole focus.”
Cal Newport (a contributing author to this book), wrote a whole book on this called Deep Work (see Notes). He tells us: “The problem this research identifies with this work strategy is that when you switch from some Task A to another Task B, your attention doesn’t immediately follow—a residue of your attention remains stuck thinking about the original task. … ‘People experiencing attention residue after switching tasks are likely to demonstrate poor performance on that next task,’ and the more intense the residue, the worse the performance.”
Plus: “To produce at your peak level you need to work for extended periods with full concentration on a single task free from distraction. Put another way, the type of work that optimizes performance is deep work.”
Here’s to cleaning up the attention residue by focusing on ONE task deeply!
You can do anything but not everything.
9.8 billion hours and 4.8 years
“Survey data collected in 2008 suggested that adults collectively watched 9.8 billion hours of television over the course of a year. In further studies using actuarial tables, researchers determined that, for every hour of television watched by an adult over the age of twenty-five, that adult’s life expectancy was reduced by 21.8 minutes. According to a New York Times article reporting on the research, ‘an adult who spends an average of six hours a day watching TV over the course of a lifetime can expect to live 4.8 years fewer than a person who does not watch TV. These results hold true even for people who exercise regularly.” ~ Linda Stone
9.8 billion hours?
(Wow.)
In addition to living those 4.8 years fewer, the obsessive TV viewers among us also trade another x years of their lives watching other people live their lives rather than actually living ours.
Is cutting down your TV viewing/online browsing one of the things you can do to optimize your daily routine?
If so, let’s.
Screen apnea
“In February 2008, after seven months of research, I wrote about a phenomenon I call e-mail apnea or screen apnea. Screen apnea is the temporary cessation of breath or shallow breathing while sitting in front of a screen, whether a computer, a mobile device or a television.
… shallow breathing, breath-holding, and hyperventilating trigger the sympathetic nervous systems toward a fight-or-flight state. In this state, our heart rate increases, our sense of satiety is compromised, and our bodies gear up for the physical activity that, historically, accompanied a fight-or-flight response. But when the only physical activity is sitting and responding to e-mail, we’re sort of ‘all dressed up with nowhere to go.’
Our bodies are tuned to be impulsive and compulsive when we’re in fight-or-flight. We also become tuned to over-consume. In this state, we’re less aware of when we’re hungry and when we’re sated. We reach for every available resource, from food to information, as if it’s our last opportunity—pulling out our smartphones again and again to check for e-mail, texts, and messages.” ~ Linda Stone
In addition to my often horrible posture (hah) while in front of a computer, I’ve definitely noticed the tendency to hold my breath at times. (You?)
And, apparently, this has a name: email apnea. Or screen apnea.
Unless we’re looking to trigger our fight-or-flight response (even more) throughout the day—leading to even more impulsive + compulsive behavior!—this is not good. :)
Quick check in: Do you hold your breath in front of a screen? And especially when you’re checking email?
Pay attention. And, if so, it’s time to bring in some deliberate deep breathing as we engage in what Linda Stone calls “Conscious Computing”!
Deep breath in.
Deep breath out.
Repeat.
Rats + Email
“The psychologist B.F. Skinner came up with the idea of random reinforcement, where you give a rat a lever and every hundred times it presses the lever, it gets a piece of food. For the rat, that is exciting. But if the number is a random number—any number between one and one hundred—it actually ends up being more exciting. And the rat keeps on working much, much more, even if you take the reward away altogether.
I think that e-mail and social networks are a great example of random reinforcement. Usually, when we pull the lever to check our e-mail, it’s not that interesting. But, from time to time, it’s exciting. And that excitement, which happens at random intervals, keeps us coming back to check our e-mail all the time” ~ Dan Ariely
That’s Dan Ariely reflecting on the question: “Why is e-mail such a great temptation system?”
Random reinforcement. It works on rats and it works on us!
The next time you find yourself reaching to pull the email (or text/Facebook/Twitter/whatever) lever, you might want to imagine yourself dressed up as a rat and ask yourself if you *really* want to be quite so compulsive.
In Dan Ariely’s section, he also chats about how choice architecture affects our online consumption. He tells us: “the environment in which we make decisions tends to have a lot to do with what our final decisions are.”
Research shows, for example, that the placement of foods in a buffet line will influence the consumption of those foods. In short: Put healthy food front and center and it’ll be consumed much more than if it’s placed in the back.
Same thing with our consumption of content on our computers and smartphones. Facebook, Twitter, etc. are not interested in your overall productivity this year and lifetime. They want you to click on something RIGHT.THIS.SECOND.
We need to be aware of our rat-like tendencies to go for the immediately satisfying and create an environment that supports our long-term goals and deepest values.
The most basic form of stupidity is forgetting what we are trying to accomplish.
Sleep + Ultradians
“A couple of key scientific findings point the way. The first is that sleep is more important than food. You can go a week without eating and the only thing you’ll lose is weight. Give up sleep for even a couple of days and you’ll become completely dysfunctional. Even so, we’re all too willing to trade away an hour of sleep in the false belief that it will give us one more hour of productivity. In fact, even very small amounts of sleep deprivation take a significant toll on our cognitive capacity. The notion that some of us can perform adequately with very little sleep is largely a myth. Less than 2.5 percent of the population—that’s one in forty people—feels fully rested with less than seven to eight hours of sleep a night.
The second key finding is that our bodies follow what are known as ultradian rhythms—ninety-minute periods at the end of which we reach the limits of our capacity to work at the highest level. It’s possible to push ourselves past ninety minutes by relying on coffee, or sugar, or by summoning our own stress hormones, but when we do so we’re overriding our physiological need for intermittent rest and renewal. Eventually, there’s a price to pay.”~ Tony Schwartz
That’s from Tony Schwartz’s section talking about the importance of increasing our capacity to meet the ever-increasing demands on our performance.
1) Sleep is more important than food. You might be in that 2.5% who can get by on less than 7 hours of sleep and feel rested. If so, high fives! If not, sleep more!
2) Ultradian rhythms are big. 90 minutes on. And then take some time off. We need to make waves and renew or, eventually, there’ll be a price to pay!
Inspiration is for amateurs, the rest of us just show up and get to work.
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