I've always secretly wanted
to be a machine.
I felt like if I was a machine,
I'd never let things
fall through the cracks,
I wouldn't forget things,
and I'd do everything I needed to do
on time every time.
I knew there were people
out there that were like this,
and I wanted to know what makes them tick.
[The Way We Work]
So a few years ago, I started a newsletter
called Super Organizers,
where I profiled 50 of the top performers
in a variety of fields.
I've talked to managers who track
everything they do in a day
in 15-minute increments.
I've talked to investors
who keep spreadsheets
of every single person they’ve ever met,
and CEOs who keep
their calendars basically empty
and rarely ever do meetings, ever.
I've also experimented
with a lot of hacks myself
to try to get me closer to my ideal.
I've taped my mouth shut
while I'm sleeping
and stared at a sunlamp
to increase my energy levels.
I visualized my compassionate self
and tried all sorts of supplements
to hack my body chemistry.
Sometimes the things I try work,
and sometimes they don’t.
Sometimes they're just kind of ridiculous.
But I want to share with you
the best trick I've learned
in all of my exploring.
The ideal of being a machine
is actually a trap.
It gets in the way of our productivity
because it makes us blind
to the roots of our actual problems.
We are not machines,
we’re emotional beings.
And learning to skillfully recognize
and work with our emotions
is the only way to actually
be productive day-to-day.
Guilt, shame, fear,
so often they're at the base
of what's going on for us
in ways that we barely understand.
What's underneath
our productivity problems
isn't just a need
for a new tool or system,
but something going on
in our emotional lives.
And being aware of and observing
how our emotions can affect us
can open up a lot
of flexibility and freedom
to make progress
when we'd otherwise be stuck.
I found that the most productive
people in the world,
the ones who are most machine-like,
actually recognize this
and they often do three things
to work with it.
They're aware when they have a problem,
they observe what's going on
without judgment
so they can understand it,
and they keep experimenting
with systems or teams,
mindsets and tools until it changes.
This might sound simple, and it is,
but it's actually very hard to do
because at each stage we get blocked
and twisted up by the shame,
guilt, fear and doubt --
the things that get in the way
of seeing things clearly.
To do this well requires a level
of emotional mastery
that is very difficult to practice.
So let me walk you through it
and show you how it can work.
Awareness is the first step.
That means being aware of problems
in your productivity.
But that's harder than it seems.
No matter what the issue is,
it's much easier to ignore it
and hope that it goes away
than to admit that something's wrong.
We feel like we should be
able to just do better.
We feel like, well, that's the job,
I should just suck it up.
Whatever the problems that you're
encountering in your productivity,
you might not think about them
that often because it's pretty painful.
But there's magic in becoming
aware of the problems
that we're ordinarily not aware of.
The most productive people
have regular practices
that they use to maintain that awareness.
Sometimes it's journaling,
sometimes it's mindfulness,
sometimes it's just a walk,
sometimes it's therapy.
But everyone has something.
Here's an example from my own life.
I have a ton of trouble staying
on top of my inbox.
I'm the CEO of a start-up,
and so this was really hard
for me to admit at first.
It seemed like an indictment of me
and my ability to be successful
if my inbox was a mess.
But last year, after a lot of reflection,
I realized that I had to face the fact
that the backlog was causing problems
throughout my company.
Once I was aware of the problem,
I could start the next step: observation.
When I moved into the observation stage,
I wanted to see with as little
judgment as possible
what usually leads
to my inbox being crowded.
Observing without judgment
was really difficult for me.
My sense of doubt and fear came up.
I thought: Should I really
need to do this?
I really felt like I should just be able
to get through my inbox
without any problems.
But once I got beneath that,
I began to notice something
really surprising.
There were actually many periods
where I was on top of my inbox.
It's just that every couple of weeks
there would be a shift
where it would just
turn into a giant mess.
And it had a very specific trigger,
either a single email
I really didn't want to deal with
or a really busy period in my life
where I couldn't look at my inbox
for a day or two.
And when this happened,
emails would start to pile up,
and I’d start to feel shame.
I'd avoid my inbox and the pile
would just get way worse.
It was a vicious cycle.
Once I saw this,
I realized that there was a logical
place to intervene.
What I really needed to do
was to catch myself
right at the point every couple of weeks
where my clean inbox
was turning into a mess.
And if I could do that, I knew I could
keep it clean the rest of the time.
This brings us to the next
step: experimentation.
Once productive people
have recognized a problem
and observed its contours
without judgment,
they try new solutions
to find out what works.
Again, this can be really easy
to get twisted up about.
We're all filled with preconceptions
about what's in and out of bounds
to experiment with,
and we're really boxed in
by those preconceptions.
We don't want to look silly or weak.
But if we allow ourselves
to find what works for us,
we often find things
that no one else would.
I tried a lot of different experiments
to deal with my inbox problems.
I tried going to a new coffee shop
every time I needed to power
through some emails.
I tried talking about it
with my business partner
and other people at my company to try
to lower my sense of shame about it.
I tried a one-touch email strategy,
I tried only checking
my email twice a day.
But none of these really solved
the problem completely.
So I kept going and I had a big insight.
I figured out I might be able to use
my own desire not to let people down
to help me get through my inbox.
I'm lucky enough to split a virtual
assistant with my business partner,
so I wondered, what if I put an hour
on my calendar a few times a week
where they would babysit me.
At the beginning of the hour,
they'd message me and ask me
how many emails I had in my inbox.
And at the end of the hour,
they'd message me again
to ask how many I'd gotten done.
I used my virtual assistant,
but you could use anyone in your life.
A family member or friend
who struggles with something similar
and propose a trade.
It literally takes a couple of seconds
to message back and forth.
When I started to consider this,
my immediate reaction was shame.
I felt like I should not need
a babysitter to do my work.
And I dreaded the conversation
where I had to ask for this kind of thing.
I also dreaded admitting it
to anyone else.
It all seemed very silly,
but I decided to try it anyway.
And it turns out just that little
interaction a few times a week
makes a gigantic difference for me.
Getting a message from my assistant
keeps me on task on my email
and prevents the piles from being created,
which makes it really easy for me to keep
my inbox clean at every other time.
And now I'm sitting here
almost a year later with a clean inbox
on a consistent basis.
This may not work for you,
but it does work for me.
You might find that other
approaches are better,
like transferring your emails
to your to-do list
or making sure you’re following
a one-touch inbox strategy
or maybe even examining why you need
to get through your inbox
in the first place.
But the only way
to find that out is to try it.
What I've realized in all of my exploring
is that I actually didn't really
ever want to be a machine.
I just felt guilty and ashamed
for not being one.
And once I started to work with that,
everything changed for me.
We think productivity is about software,
notebooks and to-do lists
frameworks, calendars,
schedules and inboxes.
And it is all of those things,
but it's also about our brains
and our bodies.
It's about our emotions
and how they guide us
and sometimes get in our way.
If you turn over the rock of productivity,
you can find a lot hiding underneath.
Identifying what's there
is the best productivity hack I know.