Hello and welcome to the workshop.
I'm Lynette, and I'm a productivity coach
with EAs.
My focus is on helping improve the productivity
of EAs and hopefully, through that, have more
impact on the world.
I got into this via studying psychology at
Harvard and then doing research on self-control
at the University of Pennsylvania and wanted
to make that more applied and hopefully more
of a direct impact.
Today, I'm going to be going over some of
the techniques that have worked really well
with my clients.
Some of these may be new to you, and if you've
read a lot of productivity stuff, some of
this may be familiar, but I think it will
still be valuable to go from hearing about
it to diving in and practicing it today, which
is the goal of this.
Think of the analogy of hearing about push-ups,
thinking they're cool, versus doing push-ups.
Today, we're going to do push-ups except the
easy kind where you type on your laptop.
To start off with, we're going to cover today
an opportunity for you to form accountability
partners if you're interested in that, and
then go into a bunch of practices on splitting
tasks in a way that will reduce aversion and
procrastination, and getting hands-on experience
doing that.
To get started off with this, can you boot
up in your mind some projects that you'd like...
Whoa!
Apparently, my board is attacking me now.
Quiet.
I did not attack it first.
While they fix that, can you start off with
booting up a project in your mind, something
that you would like to do over the next couple
of months?
Take a second and think of something here
that's like a big project that's important
to you.
We'll get to this in just a minute.
Okay.
I'm going to trust that most of you have something
in your mind.
Raise your hand if you need a minute more
though.
Cool.
With that, I want to start with an overview
of why I think that these techniques work,
and sort of set up the framework for how to
use these in your daily practice, with the
ultimate goal of having this be a habit that
you can do consistently.
Yeah.
Cool.
One very common misconception I hear is something
along the lines of, "I wish I was a more productive
type of person."
It's this assumption that productivity isn't
fully in our control.
It'll often sound something like, "I wish
I was in the mood to be productive, and I'm
just not."
I think with this, an important step is to
change that framework just a little bit.
Many of you may already have this, where you're
instead thinking about productivity as something
that's a combination of strategies and skills
and practice, and putting it with that framework.
I'd like you all to try and adopt that mindset
for this exercise today, if it doesn't happen
to be the one you have already.
Lovely, thank you.
That's something... can you all see that?
Better? Cool.
It's something like this.
One really common thing is that you have this
big goal.
It's this big, one single task and someone
would be constantly saying, "Okay, I need
to get started on this because this is important
and I care about and I want to finish this
goal."
Then, they don't do it.
Often, people will think that they're weak
or lazy or just generally not productive.
I think this is what feeds into that mindset,
but I think that there's this other part here,
this partially subconscious, partially conscious
part that's something like, "It's a big task.
What if I can't do it?
I don't really have a plan," and it's this
big ugh field that forms an additional barrier
making the goal harder to do.
From there, the really common response is
just like, "Ah, I don't know if I can do this.
I don't want to think about it."
Consciously or unconsciously, decision gets
made to, "I'll do it later."
Your present you kind of likes this.
Your future you absolutely hates it.
A little version of you that exists tomorrow
still has to do it.
They're stuck then, still faced with the same
task.
Essentially, this is like being the mean boss
to your future self.
It's saying, "Okay, just do this," even though
the current you doesn't want to do it.
What I'm trying to suggest is something like
a partnership between these yous, where the
you today is preparing this goal for the future
you, so the future you will be kind back and
do the task tomorrow, or later today.
I actually think that this is a particularly
useful separation because when you're trying
to break down the task at the moment when
you're doing it, it often has this additional
ugh field, where if you can separate these
two in time a little bit, it will sometimes
relax that.
And when this happens, all of the rest of
you, these little strings of people going
forward in time, are happy because they don't
have to worry about that task anymore.
It's changing this from mean boss to yourself,
and hence unhappy employee to yourself, to
a partnership to make your future self happy.
One suggestion of how to do that, something
to do like take this big goal, this big boulder,
and you explode it complete with a big kapow,
it sort of goes in my mind, and instead of
this one, monolithic, huge goal that's hard
to do and you don't really have a plan for,
you're left with these pieces, these individual
steps.
These pieces feel a lot more manageable.
Also, doing this can take that ugh field,
and make it a lot smaller, because instead
of this whole big "I'll fail this project,"
what you're doing is these little sub-components.
The parts of your brain that just don't like
uncertainty and don't like fearing that they
might fail think that there's a much better
chance that they can succeed at this than
at this whole thing right now.
Again, it's like this is the mean taskmaster
you, where you're just dumping this goal on
your future self.
What I'm trying to do is have you break it
down as the present you, for the future you,
so you're handing the future you these nice
little packages.
I want to pause real quick, see if this makes
sense to everyone or if there's any questions
so far.
Anyone would like to ask questions or clarify,
just stick up your hands and the people with
mics will bring you one.
In this model, you still have the initial
task of breaking it down.
If you're in a mindset where you feel like,
I just don't want to do this, doesn't that
extend also to the task of breaking it down?
To frame it another way, what's to stop my
current self from just pushing off the task
of breaking it down to the future self?
We'll get to two parts of that.
The part so far is that you're not trying
to do this all at once.
So I'm suggesting you break this up a little
bit, if you suspect that that would happen,
so you're just doing the part of breaking
it down right now.
For that part, it's a first step.
It will often feel less aversive instead of
trying to break it down and do the task all
at once.
It's also something that can be better planned
and fit into your schedule in the routine
times, like here's your time to go about doing
this, and I think once you make a habit of
it, this step stops feeling as aversive and
starts feeling more natural.
Before the first step, it's like breaking
this task down already to make planning its
own step.
Again, this is something that...
I'll work with a lot of clients who say, "Hey,
this seems familiar.
I've heard this before."
And then they come back the next week, and
they're like, "Wow, it actually worked."
What I'm trying to do is to start today that
process, that cycle of putting it into practice
and seeing that it works, so that your brain
doesn't find it aversive and hopefully gets
to a point where it finds it exciting.
That would be ideal.
For the other part, when I think of an ideal
planning structure, I think of something like
this where you have top level goals and then
consistent parts where you look at the level
above it, make plans, and trickle those down,
so that what you do each day is directly linked
back to your top level goals.
In this case, those will be those projects
you booted up in your mind today, those things
that you care about completing in the near
future.
Today though, we're just going to focus on
this step.
This is just a little taste of what I would
normally do with a client, but since we have
an hour and not several weeks, it works best
to do a little chunk.
This one is really well suited as an initial
planning phase to get that ball rolling, to
get started on making this a habit with granular
enough detail that you can still break down
tasks into little bite-sized chunks, but also
a high enough perspective that you're making
sure these are tied back to your goals.
With that, before we start the experiment
time, I want to check for more questions.
You can wait just a second. They'll be right there.
How accurate do you expect your first breakdown
of the task to be?
I kind of imagine that usually, you don't
have that great a sense in advance of what
the pieces will end up being?
Or you actually do...
Yeah.
I think it depends.
I see a variety of outcomes with people when
I'm working with them one-on-one, so I expect
that that will be true in this audience as
well, but I think that the experience of starting
to do it and then refining on that a bit is
like a good way to get the ball rolling, to
dive in and see what it feels like, and then
from there, you can apply that to life outside
and keep iterating on it, but starting with
this is like...
I think it's actually a pretty good way of
starting to get that taste.
Also, I'm here and can answer any individual
questions as we go.
To set up the frame for this, we're about
to dive into the part where you guys start
doing your experiments, so if you have laptops,
pull them out now.
If not, I suggest finding something to write
with, either a phone or a notepad if you have
them available.
As we go through this, I'm available for any
individual questions.
If you're struggling with this step or want
a clarification, throughout this whole, I'm
happy to answer your questions.
If you're wondering it, most likely, several
other people in the room are, and they're
too shy to raise their hands, so let's go
ahead and try.
And if everyone can go to this URL, if you
don't have a device with you, it'll also be
up on the screen.
While they're getting that up on screen, I'm
going to start the part of the exercise that
we need before that, before you get to that
webpage.
Okay.
I'd like to give everyone the chance to form
an accountability partner if they'd like now.
Part of what we're going to be doing is setting
up a weekly planning habit, something for
you to try out, to see this process iterated
over time.
I'd like everyone, if they would want to,
to be able to have a chance to get an accountability
partner here, someone that you can do this
with for at least a couple weeks and see how
it goes.
If you're interested in that, why don't we
stand up now and come toward the front?
If this is something you think you're already
set for, feel free to stay where you are for now
Okay, cool.
For those of you who are not finding an accountability
partner, why don't you click again on this?
Go to the first slide and then say you don't
have an accountability partner.
We can go back to the website.
Cool.
Okay, cool.
If you do have an accountability partner,
say yes and go through those steps.
Otherwise, navigate to this page.
This is a chance to write a little bit about
the goals that you booted up earlier, to have
those in your minds as you're breaking down
what are things you might want to work on
over the next month.
Just have a couple sentences in here, and
I'll give you just a minute or two for this one.
Okay, so.
One quick thing in here, why I'm having you
do this all in writing instead of in your
heads is that humans are very optimistic about
how much stuff they can store in their brains
and how much their working memory can process
at a time.
To me, it looks something like this where
your present self is saying, "I will remember
it," and your future self says, "Remember
what?"
This is what we're trying to avoid right now,
so by having it done in writing, you can refer
back to this later.
There's a place at the end where you can email
it to yourself if you'd like.
Basically, as a weekly habit, I'd really see
just that you do it in writing, because doing
it in your head typically means you'll forget
several of the things, for good or bad.
Now, everyone, just take a couple minutes
to plan out, what is the big goal that you'd
like to complete over the next week?
One big project, one task that'll take a couple
hours but is particularly aversive to you.
Something that is very important to you that
you'd like to do, and you also anticipate
that you will be tempted to procrastinate
or just not get started on for a while.
Okay, so let's continue to the next page, and if
you want to, you can make the kapow sound.
You do not have to, but I highly recommend
it.
But this is the next step, to write out all
of the sub-steps that can go into your task
to break it down.
I generally recommend that these tasks take
no longer than an hour, but I basically determined
this by, what is a small enough task that
it doesn't feel bad to start right now, if
you were going to do that?
Try and break it down to that level if you
can.
Again, if you run into any difficulties or
have questions, I'm here to answer them.
While you're still on this page, now is the
part where you can think about ordering and
prioritizing these, so are these in a process
that you could fit well in this workflow?
And, are you choosing a reasonable amount
to try and complete over this next week?
Something very common is we severely overestimate
how much we can do.
It's commonly called the planning fallacy.
It looks something like this where they are
estimating that they can do this many little
blocks.
At the end of the time, they come up with
something like this, and then feel sad.
So I'm saying, start out with something closer
to this to begin with.
Ironically, this actually helps you get more
done, frequently, because you have this manageable
amount and as you're getting on in the day,
maybe you're feeling a little bit tired, but
here's what you have left, where if you have
all of your to-do list of everything you ever
want to get done left, that's going to feel
way more overwhelming and not finishable right
then.
Let's continue on to the next page.
See how you would like to make this a habit.
I highly recommend that you try to do this
every week for at least a couple weeks to
experiment with it.
This is just a tiny taste, what I would do
normally, it's a really solid foundation of
something to try on your own and experiment
with and keep going, and it doesn't take a
lot of time, so you can fit it into your week
pretty easily.
I have the steps in here for how to go about
setting this up as a habit that you'll probably
continue.
So the first is a trigger.
What is going to be your cue for when in your
schedule, when in your week to fit this in?
Really common times with my clients are something
like Monday or Friday where you're either
looking back at your week and reviewing it
and setting up for the next, or as you get
started out in your week on Monday, setting
it up and looking back.
This is a trigger to review your plan and
do planning for the next week.
Yes.
It works best for a specific thing?
Yep, yeah, yes.
Things that I've come across before are, do
it right before you go to bed on a particular
day of the week, or do it first thing in the
morning on a particular day of the week.
I have someone who runs home from work, so
when he puts on his running shoes, he triggers
to review his plan.
It's like, what can you use as a cue for,
"Okay, here's when I do it?"
Probably tied to a day of the week though.
Do you think it's better done on Monday or
Friday as opposed to the weekends or-
I think it's fine to do it on the weekend.
Frequently, people don't want to be focusing
on their work time then, so they'd prefer
to have it built into their work schedule,
but I personally do it on Saturdays, and I
think that that works just fine.
Okay, if you have a trigger, the next step is how
you will do this.
Imagine very vividly, how you would go through
this process.
It could be something like what you're doing
today, on a piece of paper or even on this
form if you want us to keep using it.
It could also be something in an app.
A couple of useful ones that I have here are
Complice, Workflowy, and Wunderlist.
I think that both Workflowy and Wunderlist
work pretty well for putting in the steps
that you want to complete over the next week,
so you just have this list that you can check
each day.
Complice works well for daily planning if
you want to add that in at some point.
I recommend starting with just the weekly
if you haven't done that already, as a keystone
to build up and make it easy to get started,
though.
Once you have a plan for how you're going
to go about doing this and complete the plan,
then I suggest, what reminder can you set?
What outside trigger outside of your own brain
will remind you to come back to this?
Something like an alarm or a sticky note or
an accountability partner work really well
for this.
An issue that comes up for me personally is
after I set my plan, I struggle with the fact
that I have to say no to other plans seeping
in or other introductions that may veer me
off the plan, so, yeah, what's the strategy
for that?
The general recommendation for that that I
have is to set things aside if they're not
urgent, and work them into your next week
plan.
If they're urgent or clearly higher priority
than what you're working on right now, just
revise your plan for the week.
Depending on your job, most jobs don't have
this come up too often, that you would need
to redo your whole schedule.
I will also go with this planning fallacy,
build in extra time that you don't think you
need so you can have the cushion of things
taking longer than you think they will, or
new things popping up, because that almost
always happens.
If you have a bit of a cushion, usually that
can just absorb whatever little things pop
up and you won't need to redo your whole schedule.
I want to do a five-second version of a longer
CFAR technique called Murphyjitsu.
This is a way of checking whether you expect
your plan to succeed and if not, how can you
fix it?
The five-second version of this is going from
this where basically, your brain is, hmm,
I made a plan.
This seems like it could work.
Smiley face.
World's good.
My plan worked, and asking if it fails, am
I surprised?
This is checking against all the other simulated
futures that your brain is producing all of
the time.
Often, what it turns up is something like
this.
Several worlds where it doesn't expect you
to succeed.
It expects you to fail, because it knows that
there's loopholes here that will likely cause
it to crash.
I want everyone here to just ask yourself,
"If my plan failed, if I did not review this
in a week, did not come back and do the weekly
planning, would I be surprised?"
If you're not feeling something close to shock
of like, "Oh my word, how would that happen?"
then ask yourself why it would fail.
What are the loopholes?
Are you just going to forget that you planned
to do this?
Are you going to be too busy and not have
time?
Think about how you would get around those.
This is one exercise, and just a little taste
of what I would normally do with a client,
but I wanted to get everyone diving in and
practicing it.
If there's other things that you wanted to
discuss, I want to make myself available for
questions, or later, if you'd like to follow
up and ask more questions or more in-depth
talking about what would really be particularly
effective for you.
For now, I want to do a bit of a Q and A.
If anyone has general productivity questions,
suggestions, et cetera, to ask about, now
is a great time.
If you'd like my email to follow up with later,
that's there as well.
In part of being overambitious with your plans,
I think it can be really easy to have like
many focuses on what you want to accomplish.
Can you describe how you would really just
narrow your focus to just say, "I want to
accomplish this one thing alone and kind of
block out everything else to achieve that
goal?"
I have a couple different approaches to this,
that depend on the person.
The most common one would go something like
narrow down your focuses to the top priorities
based on the near-term future that you're
working towards, and what would be most important
long-term, or something?
Is there anything that would be really life-changing
like learning how to code or something for
people who want to do that?
Then, narrow down what is the most important
step over, say, a month?
Set one ambitious goal for that, and then
set everything else aside.
For people who are really struggling with
this, we can sometimes even do it on a week
scale like, "Here's what you're going to focus
on for this week," and really try and set
the other focuses aside, try this out, and
you can iterate very quickly that way if this
is the wrong focus, but that also gives you
the ability to do this thing, dive in, and
complete something when frequently, the problem
is there's lots of these things in progress,
and none of them are getting completed or
really doing focused work on because there's
too much switching going on.
You just prioritize like super near-term,
basically, and just make sure you accomplish
that task.
For people who are particularly struggling
with this, I find that prioritizing near term
gets them used to the idea of picking one
thing and doing it, and then they can treat
that more flexibly as it works for them.
I saw a hand over here.
Do you still have a question?
In the gray shirt.
Yeah.
I was wondering if you had recommendations
for like how specific versus general a project
goal should be and how short-term versus long-term
if that has any bearing on what you find people
are successful with?
Should we make a lot of short-term goals or
maybe fewer long-term goals?
I think that it helps to have a broader sense
of what your long-term goals are, and I found
that that can be very motivating for people,
but it's almost impossible to have really
specific long-term goals because things change
so much.
You learn a lot as you iterate.
You want to have that flexibility, so I generally
make general long-term goals, or specific
long-term goals with the stated intention
that this is flexible and will likely change,
and then very specific near-term goals.
And the near-term goals, you have a much higher
level of commitment to.
It's like, "Here's actually what I'm going
to do.
Over the next week, I'm really committing
to accomplishing this goal."
If that turns out to not be the best way to
tackle this, I can iterate after that, but
I'm not dithering while I'm trying to do the
work.
Because that mindset of like, "I want to do
this, but I am not positive," can often lead
to a lot of ambivalence.
Committing for a short-term very strongly
to a very concrete goal can help a lot with that
In the pink shirt.
Hey.
My question is related.
So, my job, I'm a product manager, so there's
a lot of different stuff I have to do, with
multiple levels including strategic, and then
just solving bug or something like that.
How do you help people prioritize something
that they really need to get done in an environment
like that?
Yeah.
This would be very customized to the particular
constraints of your situation, but an idealized
case would be something like, you carve out
some blocks of time for your really important
focused work that you need to get done.
Often, this will include things like turning
off email.
When I'm doing this, I turn all my devices
to airplane mode, and I'm just unreachable
for like two hours.
And then, also times where you batch smaller
tasks, like responding to your co-worker's
emails or something like that, and you do
that all in one batch, which reduces the task
on your brain of switching between things,
and lets you just more efficiently get through
it, and then separating some of these.
A lot of roles like that, where you have to
be very responsive don't have quite that freedom,
so sometimes, you can do things like carve
a work block on a weekend or at a time when
other people aren't working as much, in order
to build that flexibility in.
It really depends on your personal situation
how exactly we structure that, but I usually
try and have people to have some focused time,
and then some time where they batch admin
if there's a lot of that that they have to
do.
And a lot of that is experimentation of how
much time do you need for admin, what times
of the day are you most focused, et cetera,
and I'll work plans through a setup of testing
out what works for them, and then maintaining
a habit of implementing that.
Yeah.
I was just going to ask, how can we most effectively
act as accountability partners?
I guess things like, are there particular
structures for like how these interactions
are supposed to take place and also things
like, what are we supposed to hold each other
accountable on?
Is it things like making sure that you do
the planning, or is it like whether you're
actually accomplishing the goals that you
set out?
Yeah.
Excellent question.
I think one really good structure is that
you hold each other accountable for meeting
every week, and then during that time, you
either do the planning together, or have already
done it and discuss it in the meeting.
You can decide on this.
I don't think it really matters that much.
And then, you hold each other committed to
the task that you want to be, so you mark
the things that you're really committing to,
to each other, and then you follow through
on those together.
I think that there's a lot of variation on
how this can be.
You could have some sort of financial or social
penalty if they fail, or it could just be
your partner looks at you reproachfully, which
can be highly motivating to people.
It works.
Someone already has a microphone over here.
Say you just finished a very intensive work
session for like 15 minutes, and you have
10 minutes before the next 15-minute intensive
work session.
What would you suggest us to do for that 10-minute
relaxed time to relax more efficiently, so
you can better prepare yourself for the next
intensive work session?
I think that that's something that works really
good with experimentation.
Often though, it works well if somebody changes
up what they're doing.
So like, if they've been sitting, working
at a computer, get up, move, stretch.
Something that will engage a different part
of your brain or body than the one that you've
just been working on can help spread out the
load basically.
I guess related to the question about how
you are a good accountability partner and
maybe slightly an awkward question to ask:
like, what if your accountability partner
isn't very good?
How much should you prepare for that?
In my experience, bad accountability partner
usually means you don't hear from the person
again, in which case, I would suggest finding
a new one.
How would one go about finding a new accountability
partner?
One option would be to email me.
I can't guarantee this would work, but I do
frequently have people requesting accountability
partners, and I'm happy to keep names in mind.
If you do so, I ask that you include your
time zone because I found that coordinating
someone in India and California is kind of
hard to do sometimes.
Yep.
Another option there, if you use Complice,
is that there's a thread that you can link
to from that that will take you through who's
looking for an accountability partner.
Sometimes, you can find one on there if you're
using that particular app.
It works really well.
You can also just ask your friends.
Sometimes, that actually works really well.
Related to the question about relaxation,
what happens if you have like stochastic periods
where you're not sure when you're blocked
in something?
For example, if I'm programming, my code might
take surprisingly long to compile, or I might
be sending something off a code review and
I don't know when they'll get back to me.
What should I be working on in the meantime?
I very rarely occur where people are just
like, "I don't have anything to do right now."
Usually, there's something you can do often
on more light admin side, getting stuff out
of the way if your main project is on hold.
It's also really useful to send an email reminder
to yourself for when you expect to hear back
from these people, so if you are waiting on
people, you know when it's the appropriate
time to nudge them and that automatically
comes into your awareness, instead of waiting
for them for like two months and then like,
"Hey, how's it going?"
Right.
If it's a period of waiting that's anywhere
from 5 minutes to 30 minutes, should I be
starting another project?
Should I be like doing the emails?
What should I be doing at that, when it's
not certain how much time?
I think it really depends.
If this is something where you just have a
little break, you could do emails.
You could use that as your break time instead
of the 15-minute timer.
I don't think there's one uniform answer for
such a broad range of possible things.
What if something comes up this week but you
already have the next week planned out?
So, I generally treat plans as somewhat flexible.
When I'm doing the weekly, I have the month
planned out, but I have each week that I just
plan at the beginning of it, so I can adapt
it to what's happened before.
For projects where you need to have a bigger
timeline to make sure you're meeting some
deadline at the end, you might want to see
how can you catch up and schedule that with
yourself or someone else in order to do that,
or you may want to adjust what you have planned
for the next week to put off some lower priority
things that maybe you can set aside, in order
to finish the urgent task that you still have
left over.
If it's something that wasn't that high priority,
you didn't do it, it doesn't seem necessarily
important, you can often just not do it.
It's one way to filter out what are lower
importance things that you shouldn't actually
be trying to do.
Okay.
If there's no more questions, you're all free
to go, and I will have office hours soon if
you would like to ask me more questions.
