Category: Productivity

Priorities: The Eisenhower Matrix

The first rule of productivity is to have all your tasks written down on a todo list. The second rule must then be to order that list. The Urgent-Important Matrix is a tool to decide what you work on by plotting each task on a grid based on its urgency and importance. The matrix is named after US President Dwight Eisenhower, who developed the Eisenhower Principle to help him make decisions as an Army General and then as a President.  

Eisenhower’s Urgent/Important Principle: “I have two kinds of problems: the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Important: Of great significance or value.

Oxford Languages

Urgent: Requiring immediate action or attention.

Oxford Languages

For each task, you will assess if it is important and if it is urgent. Once the tasks have been assessed, they will sit in one of four categories:

  1. Important and Urgent
  2. Important but Less urgent
  3. Less important but Urgent
  4. Less important and Less urgent

You can then use these categories to allocate what you need to do with each task.

  1. Do first
  2. Schedule
  3. Delegate
  4. Don’t do

Use the Eisenhower Matrix in Office 356

In most todo apps, such as Microsoft To Do, you can create categories and assign them to tasks. You will first have to set up your categories; Microsoft suggests the following:

  1. Urgent
  2. Important
  3. For later
  4. Blocked
  5. Needs focus time
  6. 15_minutes

Next, you need to add categories to each task by selecting “category” and choosing from one or more of the categories you created. The categories will then appear under each task. 

How many hours do you actually work?

The typical working day in most of the west is 8 hours or 40 hours per week. Working 8 hours per day can be traced back to sixteenth century Spain where the day was split into two four hour blocks with a break in the middle for when the day was at its hottest. The UK currently has a 48-hour working week limit, with a voluntary opt-out, set out in the Working Time Regulations of 1998 and later the EC Working Time Directive of 2003. But is the factory model of hours the most effective for knowledge workers?

“Eight hours’ labour, Eight hours’ recreation, Eight hours’ rest”

Robert Owen

In academia in the UK, contracted hours are more like 7.4 or 37 hours per week. Studies suggest that 7.6 hours per day or 38 hours per week is the optimum working hours for a knowledge worker and that productivity falls sharply over 50 hours per week. Taking a full day off each week and six weeks of holiday per year also positively impacts your productivity. 

A study of UK office workers found that people were only productive for 2 hours and 53 minutes each day on average. Workers spend the rest of the day on distractions, including checking social media (44 minutes), reading news websites (65 minutes), and discussing out of work activities with colleagues (40 minutes). Over half of those surveyed said that these distractions made the working day more bearable and aided in their productivity.  

Track your work for a week or two and find out how many hours your ‘at work’ and how many of those are on the things you think are essential. Once you have that information, decide how you want to spend your time; if you are only doing three hours per day of productive work, can you increase that to four and spend the rest of the day being more deliberate with your time? What could you do with those 44 minutes if you delete Instagram from your phone?

How to maximise your productivity at work

  • Average around 38 hours of work per week
  • Do not work over 50 hours a week regularly
  • Take at least one day per week entirely off
  • Take six weeks of holiday per year
  • Spend a week or two logging your work to identify the wasted time and eliminate that to free up your time for whatever you want to do with it. 

You should write a book

If you have original ideas that have value or are an expert in a field, you should write a book no matter how niche. There will be at least one person out of the almost eight billion people in the world that needs your ideas or could benefit from your advice to develop the skills that you have earned. If you are not yet an expert or feel you have something to share, but you don’t feel you are ready, the act of writing a book might be the thing you need. Start by writing a book proposal and commit to the process of two to four hours a day for the next two years, working on your ideas, skills, and expertise. 

Why write a book?

Seth Gobin, in a February 2007 blog post, suggests that everyone should write a book. He describes how he wrote his ebook ‘Unleashing the Ideavirus‘ to give away free to spread the idea (about how free ideas spread faster than expensive ones). The book was downloaded over two million times, and a Google search for the term brought up over two hundred thousand results at the time of his post. Godin writes that on top of the opportunity to share your ideas across the globe, writing helps to organise and clarify the ideas making them better. 

Smart people with good ideas worth sharing can get a lot out of this exercise.

Seth Godin

Andress Erikson, in his book Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise, wrote that experts form better mental representations about their specialist subject through deliberate practice. Mental representations “in essence… are preexisting patterns of information – facts, images, rules, relationships, and so on – that are held in long-term memory and that can be used to respond quickly and effectively in certain types of situations.” The deliberate practice of writing a book will allow you to solidify your understanding of your specialist area and build mental representations.

In Daniel Priestley’s book ‘Key Person of Influence‘, he writes that being an author in your area of expertise provides validation and trust in your skills and allows people an opportunity to learn more and share your ideas. Having a published book is also a great way to attract like-minded people.

Very few people create a significant volume of published content. If you have articles, blogs, reports, case studies and a book, you are much more likely to be perceived as a Key Person of Influence in your industry.

Daniel Priestley

Writing and publishing a book can cost nothing, and there are no barriers beyond effort and time. Your book can be launched using your website and social media platform and via amazon self-publishing. You can treat your book as a channel of your portfolio business, as the output of deliberate practice while developing expertise, or as an opportunity to share your ideas with people who will find value in them. Now I have convinced you that you need to write a book, we need to look at what to write. 

What to write

Non-fiction books are traditionally between 50000 to 80,000 words; it takes around 500 words to fill an A4 page, so that is just 100-150 pages. To fill those 100 pages, you need to start with two things;

  1. A big idea
  2. A target audience

Your book needs to solve a problem and should be written as a transition from confusion to clarity. Start with the audience and how you can help them. The total addressable market, the number of people who make up your target audience, should be quite targeted if you intend to self-publish, and you will need to address a specific problem. If you are unsure, think of a younger version of yourself or a beginner in your field. Next, think about the one big idea that you would like to share with them to solve a problem they will experience, and you could help them solve it. 

A great example of a big idea and a specific target audience is Cal Newport and his big idea around deep work. Cal has written five books since becoming an academic; So Good, They Can’t Ignore You, Deep Work, Digital Minimalism, The Time-Block Planner, and A World Without Email. Cal’s big idea is that to create the life you want; you need to develop your ‘…ability to focus without distraction on cognitively demanding tasks.’ Cal’s target audience is millennial knowledge workers that are easily distracted by social media.  

Geoffrey Moore’s Value proposition framework from his book Crossing the Chasm will let you know if you are ready to start writing or if you need to explore your ideas further.

Moore’s Value Proposition Framework

For (target reader)Who (statement of need or opportunity)

The  (working book title) is a book

That  (key benefit, reason to buy)

Unlike  (primary competitive alternative)

My book  (statement of primary differentiation)

You should treat writing your book as a software app or new business idea and use your value proposition as a business plan idea. Talk to people, specifically your target read and test out the ‘statement of need or opportunity to see if it accurately represents a problem you could fix and check that the ‘key benefit’ will be a solution. Finally, have a look at similar books on the market and make sure that you have something unique to say. Tech start-ups are advised to get feedback from at least fifty people before committing to a business model, so use this as a guide and be systematic in collecting feedback on your big idea to help write your book proposal.

Start with a book proposal

Traditionally, a book proposal is a document written for publishes to convince them to publish your book. The publishing industry is at least as old as the Gutenberg printing press (1440), and the process of writing has been developed over the last six hundred years, so it is worth paying attention to. Even if you intend to self-publish, the book proposal is an ideal place to start to help you structure your ideas. 

The book proposal summarises the book’s big idea, lays out the chapters with a summary for each, and proposes a marketing plan to create awareness of the book with your target audience. You will want to use your value proposition and the notes from your interviews to brainstorm critical questions, concepts, and facts that you want to use and start to arrange this into a structured narrative.  

MasterClass suggested a book proposal should include:

  1. Title page
  2. Overview
  3. Author bio
  4. Chapter outline and table of contents
  5. Sample chapter
  6. Competitive titles analysis
  7. Target audience
  8. Marketing plan
  9. Additional information

Now Do the Work.

Time to dust off the running shoes

After a two month break and on the first sunny weekend of the year, it is time to dust off the running shoes. My current project 4w/kg programme runs until the 1st of May, and I want to be ready to move to a running focus once this goal is achieved. Preparing to run will involve gradually prepare my body for an attack on the next step in the distance runners progression; a 40 minute 10k.

The first job is to lose some body fat and get down to a body weight that is more suited to running fast. Losing weight while maintaining power is key to achieving the four watts per kilogramme needed for project 4w/kg, so this is already on the schedule. Running is a series of single-leg jumps, and the lighter you are, the less force is needed to perform each jump. The less useless weight, the less effort to go the same speed, and so the same effort will take you faster. Carrying a bit of extra weight (3-4kg) over the winter has been healthy, and I have enjoyed eating everything in sight, but with the winter coming to an end, it is time to get a bit leaner. Weight loss happens in the kitchen, and I know all I need to do to get down to my target of 80kg is to clean up my diet and stop eating all the treats.

The greatest need for all athletes is strength. More and more strength.

Percy Cerutty

While I am losing body fat, I also want to build a runners body. I am already doing a heavyweight session twice per week as part of my bike programme. Still, the frequency of my gymnastics and core work, stretching, and general physical preparation could be increased. Percy Cerutty’s 100 sit-ups first thing in the morning and a range of strength and conditioning four-minute movement breaks focused on the hips, core, and hamstrings will support the weight loss to prepare the body to run fast. Kelly Starret, in his book Ready to Run, provides twelve standards that will help build the runners body:

  1. Neutral feet
  2. Flat shoes
  3. A supple thoracic spine
  4. An efficient squatting technique
  5. Hip flexion
  6. Hip Extention
  7. Ankle range of motion
  8. Warm-up and cool down
  9. Compression
  10. No hotspots
  11. Hydration
  12. Jumping and landing

Most importantly, runners run, so I need to slowly get back into regular running. 5k Masters record holder, coach, and author of Fast 5k, Pete Magil, suggests that all runners should start with a run-walk programme to avoid injury and build strength in the key muscles. Brad Hudson’s short and intense hill sprints can also improve running form and condition alongside the run walks. Finally, G. Walter George’s 100-up exercise can be done once per day to develop stride length in place of going out for a run. 

The plan

  • Monday: run/walk am, light rite of passage workout
  • Tuesday: bike am, weight session with 8-10 second hill sprints pm
  • Wednesday: bike am, run/walk and medium rite of passage workout pm
  • Thursday bike am, 
  • Friday: run/walk am, weights session with run drills and 8-10 second hill sprints pm
  • Saturday: bike am, heavy rite of passage workout and optional run/walk pm
  • Sunday: bike am

Daily core, stretch, and strength routine as 4-minute movement breaks

  • 100 Sit-ups first thing in the morning
  • Planks directly before I start work
  • 75-150 kettlebell swings
  • 100-ups
  • Light Deadlifts: five sets of 10 reps @40kg

The plan might look a lot written down, but the only two heavy workouts are the Tuesday and Sunday bike sessions. The other activities are lighter and should not affect the next sessions. In the current training phase, the strength sessions are there to maintain strength rather than build it.

A 30 day time block scheduling challenge

Working from home has been good for my productivity. I am fitter and healthier than ever before, my work output has increased significantly, and I have been able to publish a daily blog. Work has moved on from the project-based approach used to manage to move a whole university online, and so the way I work needs to evolve too.

Removing the commute has given me an hour and a half of extra time each day, and working from home has given me more freedom around my working hours to focus on output rather than time in the office. I have used this time to train twice per day for the last year consistently; some cardio at 7 am each morning, some strength training or recovery work in the afternoon for 45 minutes to an hour between 16:00 and 18:00, and four-minute movement breaks where they fit throughout the day. The output so far has been a 1:35 half marathon, a 308w FTP on the bike, a 120kg Squat, a 100kg bench press, and a 142.5kg Deadlift, while weighing around 82kg and at 6ft tall.

I have written over 100 daily blog posts so far by finding around an hour each evening after dinner, between 19:00 and 20:00, to do some research, write, and publish it. I loosely aim to write somewhere in the region of 500 words to keep within the time and force myself to be concise. We consume so much content these days between articles on our phones, youtube videos, and reading for work, that I write about whatever I think about or consuming that day. I have found many of the posts useful for work; I have reused some of the content for work when the topic has been raised, sometimes weeks later.

My morning and evening routines outside of work are highly structured, but my working hours have to be more reactive. Universities have moved all, or most, of their teaching online, and so those of us in online learning has never been busier. This week I stopped my teams daily stand-ups. Our work is moving from project-based to a new normal, the daily meetings had become more social events than supporting productivity, so it is time to reassess how I use my working hours to have more of an impact. I want to be more deliberate with my time during work in a similar way to my strength and conditioning training and writing practice.

Time blocking

The first step of any productivity system is to spend five minutes writing a task list at the start of the day. Most people stop at this stage and then start with the first item or might prioritise the list and start with the most important. This approach presents two issues; the first is that tasks tend to expand to fill the time available, known as Parkinson’s law. The second is that we are not good at estimating the time something will take to block out space in our calendar. To solve these issues, we need to track how long tasks take consistently, and then we need to use this knowledge to block out that a suitable amount of time to complete the task efficiently.

Schedule every minute of your working day

For the next thirty days, I will follow a time blocking routine to be more deliberate in the use of my time and focus on the work that is going to impact students’ experience in the new academic year.

The practice:

  1. Write down what you want to do at the start of the day.
  2. Estimate how long each of these items will take.
  3. Schedule these blocks of time in 30-minute chunks around your existing commitments.
  4. Follow your schedule; at any point you deviate from it, update the plan for the rest of the day by moving the unfinished blocks as required.
  5. Make a note of how long each task took next to your estimate and assess why you were wrong – use this knowledge to help you schedule similar tasks in the future.

Let me know on Twitter if you want to try time blocking your workday too. A remember, the aim is to take control of your day and learn to plan your time better, not to be fixed to a schedule.

I have blogged every day for 100 days; this is what I’m learning

I started my daily blog after reading Attempts by Dan John and listening to a podcast with Seth Godin about this new book, The Process. I have always loved the idea of being an essayist, developing ideas about things, being informed, coming to my conclusions on something I feel is important, and sharing them with anyone that might find value in it. I had also just finished Percy Cerutty’s biography, written primarily using Cerutty’s writings, found in his study after he died. There seems to be a connection between great thinkers and a habit of writing. Dan John and Seth Godin’s books kicked me into committing to this practise of daily writing.  

If you know you have to write a blog post tomorrow, something in writing, something that will be around six months from now, about something in the world, you will start looking for something in the world to write about. You will seek to notice something interesting and to say something creative about it. Well, isn’t that all we’re looking for? The best practice of generously sharing what you notice about the world is exactly the antidote for your fear.

Seth Godin

Like many people, I consume a lot of content:

  • I read The Economist weekly paper
  • I get at least one audiobook a month with a subscription to Audible 
  • I read books on Kindle 
  • I view the Kindle and Audible daily deals and pick up more books than I can read
  • I watch a little too much YouTube
  • I always have an online course on the go

I wasted a lot of this content, doing little or nothing with the ideas I found. I relied on my memory to trigger some relevant reading when I wanted to discuss things or solve a problem at work. Regular writing solves this issue; the stuff I write pulls together the things I am reading and my thoughts. Each post is filed away to be searched when needed and used, and the active recall in writing aids in assimilating the ideas into what I already know.

My daily blogging goals are to develop beautiful writing, build a habit for delivering that writing every day, and improve my thinking, mainly related to my work, by putting it out into the world.  

What I did not realise is that people would read it. Today I have one hundred and seven people on my email subscription list and get around twenty unique views per day. WordPress.com’s reader is the main place I get new traffic from via the keywords I add before publishing. I also use the WordPress Twitter integration to tweet links to each post and add two relevant hashtags to help people find the tweet.

I use Grammarly as my word processor to improve my writing. My spelling at school was terrible, and that psychologically stopped me from learning to write well. Using Grammarly premium for the last few years, initially to check my papers at work, and then later for everything I write on my laptop has fixed this. I am still really self-conscious about my writing ability, but the app gives me the confidence I need to communicate my ideas, and the continued use has significantly improved my work. 

My Process

  1. Read a lot to find trigger material
  2. Use the dictionary, Wikipedia and other sources to learn more
  3. Collect my research in Readwise through Instapaper and Adobe Acrobat Online 
  4. Draft an outline in Grammarly
  5. Go back to the source material to filling gaps and details
  6. Copy into WordPress.com and format
  7. Publish with keywords and share via Twitter using two hashtags

Seth Godin suggests committing to 200 days of writing every day to develop the practice as a habit. I have learned a lot, and I am only halfway through. Each post takes me between an hour and two hours in the evening to generate around 500-700 words. For the next 50 days or so, I will start adding some audio recordings of some of my posts and then move to video for my most-read posts in the final 50 days. 

If you like my blog, get in touch with me on Twitter.

30 minute clean

Dan John suggests in most of his books to have a cleaning routine and a cooking menu. The John house routine includes a set day for specific tasks like Monday for white laundry, Tuesday for black laundry etc. to free up headspace for work and thought. If you need scientific studies to prove that having a clean home is good for you, there are many, but as David Allen describes in Getting things done, you should do everything you can to reduce the background noise in your head to focus your attention on the task at hand. Having set days for specific chores does that.

For the last month or so I have used Saturday mornings for a two-hour ride on Zwift and then a quick clean of the house, mainly sweeping and washing the wood floors downstairs and vacuum the stairs and the rooms upstairs. I found a list for how to clean your entire home in 30 minutes on the Art of Manliness website and thought I would use it to add to my Saturday morning cleaning routine.

Saturday morning cleaning routine

  1. quickly organise each room you visit
  2. bathroom: spray all surfaces including the toilet leave to soak
  3. spot clean kitchen
  4. Wipe and dust all surfaces downstairs
  5. Vac all carpets
  6. Sweep, and wash wood floors
  7. make the bed, put away loose items, put laundry in the basket, and clean bedroom, 
  8. Return to the bathroom and scrub
  9. Take out bins

It took me 60 minutes to complete the ’30-minute’ routine this morning, and my wife did most of the bathroom. Yes, I did use a stopwatch, and yes, next week I will be quicker.

An introduction to persuasive writing

Most of the time, we try to make writing complicated or create an outline without considering the outcome we are trying to achieve. Next time you write something, try and first think about what you want the reader to do with the information and put it at the top of the page. 

Next, try to limit your writing to the three most critical points that the reader needs to know to take that action. Keeping the number of points to three helps the reader remember them, keeps your writing concise, and makes you spend time doing more in-depth analysis on what matters. Note down the three points and supporting evidence as bullet points in an order that flows.

Good ideas ought not to be dressed up in bad prose.

Barbara Minto

Once you have the call to action and the main points written down as notes, turn them into full sentences. You can use Grammarly to help you with your language and polish the piece without spending much time on editing. Evaluate the work once it is written to make sure it fulfils the original purpose of making the reader take action, if not, revisit your three points and make them stronger.

Great wirting is talking edited

Steve Crescenzo

Use a final read-through to read it out loud and pick up any issues with flow. If it is easy for you to read it out loud, then it will be easy for someone to read it in their head. Correct anything you need to, and then you are done.

The four simple steps to writing persuasive arguments

  1. Put down what you want the reader to do 
  2. note the three most important things the reader needs to understand to take that action 
  3. Write 
  4. Ask yourself: If I was the reader, would I take action based on what is written? 

Leardership and management 101

I believe there are three keys to strong leadership and management:

  1. Vision
  2. Wellbeing
  3. Productivity

First, you have to have a clear and ambitious vision for the future your team is creating and communicate it so that they believe it. Next, you need to look after the individual team members and promote psychological safety. Finally, you need to break your vision down into clear goals and let each team member know what they are responsible for, then let them get on with it.  

Vision: the ability to think about or plan the future with imagination or wisdom.

Oxford Languages

Wellbeing: the state of being comfortable, healthy, or happy.

Oxford Languages

Productivity: the effectiveness of productive effort, especially in industry, as measured in terms of the rate of output per unit of input.

Oxford Languages

A new manager can start with simple steps for each of the three elements and then gradually built upon them to spiral out their capabilities as a manager and leader. For example, once you have written a vision, you are holding regular open and honest 1:1 meetings with each team member, and everyone is clear on what they should be working on, you could turn your vision into a strategy, You could add a daily stand each morning to build community in the team, and you can start to have more control over the flow of work by identifying and removing constraints.

If you want some ideas on how to spiral out your vision and productivity, Jim Collins’s Level 5 leadership and the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) are an excellent place to start. For wellbeing, begin by learning about creating a psychologically safe workplace and then take the lessons of Self-determination theory to encourage your team to develop autonomy, competence, and relatedness in their work.

2021 daily routine.

My first blog set out my daily schedule, but since then, with all the writing and research I have done each day, I have updated my routine significantly. I have linked to the posts where I have written about any additional daily practice. This routine is the idea but is regularly altered based on the work I am doing that day. I have recently added several daily techniques to improve my sleep, making this list much longer than the original.

I put regular four-minute movement breaks throughout the day, including the 100-Up exercise, between meetings or after every 25-minute Pomodoro. My bike workouts are following a five-month programme to improve my four kilometres Individual pursuit power. My strength training is a mix between squatting everyday, heavy kettlebell swings, and the Rite of passage kettlebell programme.

6:00 Wake up

  • 10-100 sit-ups
  • 5-minute activity to wake up and get the heart rate going
  • Weigh myself
  • Protein shake
  • Granola

7:00 – 

8:00 – 9:00* – Get a coffee and start work

9:00 – Daily stand-up

9:30 – 12:30* – 2 hrs of deliberate practice (Work)

12:30 – Lunch

15:00 – 18:00* – Strength session

18:00 – Cook, eat, and spend time with my wife

19:00 – Daily blog

20:00 No more food

21:00 – Bedtime

  • Clean the kitchen
  • 10-100 sit-ups
  • Read in bed on the kindle Oasis 
  • Take ZMA

21:30 – 11:00* Sleep 

*Sometime within this period