Guide to Organization and Productivity

I made a PowerPoint for my school last to help introduce some of the principals of productivity. I am going to summarize what I think are the most important elements of productivity and why most of the books out there, while useful, may or may not waste your time since each person’s definition is different for how to be organized.

The inspirations for this post: “Atomic Habits” James Clear, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” Stephen R. Covey, Nathanial Drew YouTube, Matt D’Avella YouTube, Tiago Forte, Better Ideas YouTube.

What are the aspects of productivity?

• Time
• The Zone / Flow State
• Information Collection
• Habits
• Information
• Information Organization, File Organization

Time - Always be aware of what you are doing with your time

• Keep a calendar and have a to-do list. The items on the list should be delegated to a point in time.
• Keep in mind the 80/20 rule. What 20% of your time and effort is going to yield 80% of the results.
• Productivity and life is a marathon. Consistency is more important than the rate of output. Burnout is what you’re trying to avoid.

The Zone / Flow State - How are you managing your attention? If you want to get something done, what is distracting you from doing it?

• Batch email/notification processing and automations
• Eliminating all non-essential communication (such as spam emails)
• No multitasking except music

Information Collection - Are you aware of what information you are consuming?

• Disinformation, Deepfakes, and Bots post are all part of the modern internet. Make you sure are aware of what is a distraction and what is not.
• Keep in mind a Signal to Noise Ratio. Realistically, how are you going to keep up if you’re subscribed to 500 newsletters, Podcast, or YouTube Channels. If you’re within the gaming community this should be readily obvious from your Steam Library Backlog.
• Remember that test taking strategies also work for comprehension of ideas - Notes, Underlining, identifying fluff, context clues

Habits - Not Procrastination - How are you keeping a Rhythm in your life?

• (Examples of habit building are pulled from Atomic Habits)
• Make it obvious - if you want to eat healthier, put an apple on your counter in plain sight instead of a cookie
• Make it attractive - having an accountability buddy
• Make it easy - Write down what you want to get done the night before
• Make it satisfying - positive reinforcement mechanism

Information Organization - How are you organizing the things you collect?

• Have a unified storage system - platforms are the enemy, simplicity is key (When you think about searching for a file, is everything in one place such a Dropbox. Instead of files being spread across Icloud, Gdrive, Dropbox)
• 3/2/1 method for data backup = Three data copies, Two types of storage, One offsite backup - losing data is much more costly than unorganized data

File Organization - How are you files organized?

• Identify current weak points - “What exactly is in my ‘other documents’
• 1% Rule and the compound effect - If you reduce the time to find a file from 10 seconds to 5 seconds. Imagine the time you save over the course of your life.
• File Naming Systems - Becoming your own librarian
• Really Long Descriptions “Medical Bill from Hospital for the Broken Hand from Falling Off My Bike”
• Class Codes / Short Hands - FUN 432, ACCT 201, ACCT 311, ACCT 425
• Dates - YYYY_MM_DD - 2024_09_05 File XYZ
• Johnny Decimal System (https://johnnydecimal.com/) - Call sign for every file. “Business Development” > 16.02 “sixteen oh-two”

Other Advice and Consideration

• Have a mobile/online/web version of everything, so you can do anything from anywhere
• Health: get sleep, hydrate, eat good, meditation & stress management
• SMART Goals - Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound
• Management = Delegation, Leadership = Unifying efforts and goals
• Have some way to track your online time - ActivityWatch - Open-Source Time Tracker
• Learn Keyboard Shortcuts on your computer