Howdy to 104th issue of Deliberate Internet – my newsletter combining nuanced perspectives on Remote Work, Technology, Psychology, and other latest obsessions.
Sometimes, I feel like productivity influencers are running a grift to make “productivity” more complicated than it needs to be.
- You don’t need a whole morning routine of journaling, gratitude, and meditation.
- You don’t need to do a workout before work.
- You don’t need to set up your workstation, adjust ten monitors, and measure the angle of your chair with a ruler purchased from Switzerland.
It is sometimes more important to keep up momentum, than it is to go through your 12-item morning checklist.
Sure, preparation pays off, and doing stuff deliberately – even more so. But – and I can hardly type these words – you actually can be too Deliberate.
Preparation becomes an excuse to endlessly fine-tune the process, to get the mental game so right that the work does not even need to be done at all.
Guess what!
The work needs to be done. The more you put it out, the more of a chore it becomes. Just do the ting. I won’t rat you out to productivity influencers.
A thing I’ve read
Effortless personal productivity
Jakob’s approach to productivity seems more elaborate than presented above, but still quite simple:
“Do what you feel like”
More specifically, he recommends keeping lists of stuff you can do in different frames of mind. Instead of fighting with your current mental state by weaponizing the morning routine, he recommends just going with the flow.
- Step 1: develop meta-awareness of your state of mind.
- Step 2: pattern-match to identify your mind’s most common modes.
- Step 3: learn to pick activities that match each mode.
Trying to force yourself to do a task that is not a good fit for your current state of mind is not only a poor use of time but actually counter-productive
Great conversations have lots of doorknobs
Adam takes us on a deep dive into the science of great conversations. He reminds us to leave a lot of doorknobs – statements that our conversation partners can grab on to, get excited about, and branch the discussion in a completely new direction.
Gall’s Law
A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system
Don’t overcomplicate things. Just do the ting.
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