# Optimizing your routine After you've [defined meaningful goals](success-3_goals.md), the only way to magnify your work (beyond [delegating](mgmt-1_why.md)) by simplifying your routine. How you spend every day is how you spend your life. - If you spend less time doing the same things, you'll do more things in less time, which allows you more spare time to do what you'd prefer to do. - Over time, we learn to "budget" our time, [a bit like money](money-3_budget.md), and fill extra time with what we *want* to do. - First, we must understand ways to speed up our tasks, then find the precise places those techniques apply. We only take a few seconds to make our most important daily decisions, but they build momentum: - Minutes build into hours, days, and years. - A few minutes a day across years can [*really* add up](https://neal.fun/where-does-the-day-go/). - Mind your minutes to take care of your years. - If you already have small, attainable goals, you only need a trigger to start your [habits](habits.md). The fewer things you're focused on, the more precisely you can dedicate your efforts: - When you've removed almost anything else, the entire experience might look a bit like an [obsession](addiction.md) to others. - Dense work and [ideas](values.md) come from intense concentration. ## Productive momentum is a flow of triggers Triggers are subconscious connections that recall flashbacks or memories from prior experience: - Those recollections bring rewards and punishments that set our methods in motion. - 90% of our decisions are subconscious, but humans are unique because they can stop mid-response to examine their actions. - Most people don't observe their triggers until they see adverse consequences, but [self-aware](awareness.md) people can observe triggers as they engage. - Every trigger's reaction moves us through a ritual or habit. - Good rituals and habits free us up to make meaningful decisions and thoughts. - Dysfunctional rituals and habits waste precious resources. - We tend to make our *next* decision based on what our previous one was. Daily self-discipline is the skill of adapting triggers to make life a seamless in-and-out flow of tasks: 1. [Observe](awareness.md) anything you want to change. 2. [Visualize](success-2_attitude.md) the actions you want to do or avoid. 3. [Set rational goals](success-3_goals.md) you believe you can attain. 4. Notice triggers that don't flow toward those goals. 5. Make a conscious effort to redirect your energy on the next trigger to more meaningful ends. Slice each task into as small an action as possible: - The smaller the task, the simpler it is, and the easier it is to optimize. - If you have any [computers](computers.md) or [robotics](computers-robotics.md), it's *much* easier to [program](computers-programming.md) as well. - It's much easier to detect whether smaller tasks are moving toward [goals](success-3_goals.md) you want. - Accomplishing many small tasks is *guaranteed* to give you more of a [sense of meaning](meaning.md) than accomplishing one large task. Slowly adapt your habits and rituals: - Too much harshness will push your mind to rebel elsewhere with destructive behaviors. - A small 5-minute routine can alter a lifestyle within a month. - Only shift routines for up to 15 minutes at a time. ### Making incentive triggers Avoid making triggers that create unhappy thoughts or impulsive behaviors: - Positive reinforcement usually gets you much farther than negative reinforcement. To make it easy, try to attach the triggers to the thing itself: - Leave a book where you will use it. - Tell someone to remind you if you're doing something for them. Only use external rewards you will crave and know you can get: - Give rewards for completing the challenge, even if you do it badly. - Eat a piece of candy or raisin when you make a small victory. - Place money in a jar when you do a task, then treat yourself after you have enough money. Start decreasing your external reward as you begin feeling accomplished: - We usually feel the full extent of accomplishment after about a month of dedication. Reprogram indecision for unimportant choices to avoid wasting energy: - Make yourself impulsive about anything that won't matter in 24 hours. - Flip a coin. - Before looking at a clock, decide whether the minute is even or odd. - Select the choice you haven't tried before. - If you don't like the decision, simply choose the opposite of whatever the dictating decision was. ## Stop procrastinating Procrastination is fulfilling a short-term desire to ignore a long-term one: - Procrastination usually forms from arbitrary perfectionism or inflated fears about the worst parts of a project. - In fact, it's normal to procrastinate starting! We procrastinate by filling time with small, mindless, simple tasks: - Take advantage of procrastination by doing important, small tasks *for* your project. - Keep subdividing tasks until planning for them is more work than doing them. - If it suits you, separate the tasks by how much energy or time you'll need. We may also procrastinate because we don't know what to do next: - If you have many things to do, just grab something. - Make sure you know what you want to do *before* you start your day. One of the best ways to keep us accountable is to track our habits and decisions: - By tracking the dates and times we perform habits, we become [aware](awareness.md) of our behaviors. - Tracking decisions can often give us insight on when we fail to make a healthy routine and how. You will only thoroughly beat procrastination by starting: - Use your time the way you'd like others to use theirs. - Really successful people feel the same motivation issues as anyone else, but they still show up and perform. ### Use "forcing functions" to stop postponing A forcing function inspires more action by limiting or committing resources to make a lazy action worse: - Perfectionism tries to fix worthless errors and sabotages productivity. - Forcing functions make your task easier than the alternatives. - The most intense forcing functions have *no* backup plans! Invest into something non-revocable: - Join and pay for a club, class, or gym. - RSVP a meeting. Foster a sense of urgency with short-term deadlines: - Set an alarm within the next hour for your task. - Make an end-of-week deadline. Make your alternatives less appealing: - Make every other task than the one you want to do more tedious. - Snap a rubber band on your hand every time you get distracted. Hold yourself "hostage" until you finish: - Take away privileges like coffee, recreation, or leisure activities. - Don't take your laptop power cord while working away from home. - Use a public computer or library computer. - Use a second work account on your computer. Inspire the fear of shame: - Tell others about your commitments to hold yourself accountable. - Visualize the pain you'll feel from procrastination. - Commit to doing it with a friend. ## Make your routine a string of triggers Look for [triggers and "life hacks"](success-triggers.md) to engage better, faster, more focused work. With a state of "flow", each day reinforces the next as a feedback loop: - Clear, specified goals you believe you can accomplish - Easier to concentrate and focus - No sense of self-consciousness - A distorted sense of time, where the activities feel effortless - You get instant feedback that makes you feel like nothing is too easy or too hard Work to maximize your energy, *not* your time. ## Stay in the moment Your ability to focus on one task at a time determines your productivity. Multitasking, contrary to what it feels like, is one of the most inefficient ways to work: - Multitasking performs two tasks inadequately. - Beyond mindless tasks, multitasking always underperforms compared to mono-tasking. - Females can usually handle the stress of multitasking better, but they're still more inefficient than one task at a time. Staying focused on one task is difficult because we tend to drift between tasks: - Modern society makes mono-tasking even harder. - If you must, mono-task for a few seconds or minutes at a time and cycle between tasks. However, while multitasking doesn't work, time-splicing is *very* powerful: 1. Perform Task A that has a lead time (e.g., loading laundry into a washing machine). 2. While waiting for Task A, perform Task B as something that can be interrupted (e.g., [studying flashcards](mind-memory.md)). 3. As soon as Task A is done, stop Task B and go back to Task A. 4. When chained together, plenty of work can be overlapped. If you think about *anything* you're unable to do at that precise moment, write a note to deal with it later: - We tend to forget things we don't write notes for. - Consider a "Think About List" that captures all the thoughts you want to entertain later. Set alarms so you don't have to worry about time: - We aren't any good at measuring time, especially when we're working. - Any time spent thinking of a deadline is distracting from the task you're currently trying to perform. Your physical state affects your focus: - Whether you've taken a shower that day - Your position and posture sitting at your desk - The speed at which you walk and talk - The number of things on your desk or work space Stay on-task with a parallel activity: - Chew gum, especially peppermint or cinnamon flavor. - Listen to music, comedy, or background noise. - White noise, brown noise, or pink noise can drown out ambient noises. If you run out of things to do, ask, "What should I become?" Develop "soft skills" that apply to many tasks: - Touch typing - Speed reading - [Computer use](computers-fast.md) - Hand-eye coordination ### Use music appropriately Any music you are familiar with, no matter the genre, will improve your mood: - People in a good mood perform more repetitive tasks with less energy. Music enhances creativity, with the notable exception when a task is language-related and the music has lyrics. Music with a dominant beat can improve concentration even after turning the music off: - Instrumental music, especially video game music, is excellent repetitive "background" music. Distracting music, no matter its genre, will always interfere with learning. ## Pace yourself We can only focus on one task for 52 minutes before needing a 17-minute break: - Anything longer makes us bored, inattentive, unfocused, unhealthy, and unmotivated. We usually work longer because the stress *feels* productive. To stay productive long-term, do *not* fight what your body and brain are telling you. Even if you don't honor the 52/17 schedule, try to honor your ultradian rhythm: 1. Arousal: move into the task with some level of excitement (about 30 minutes) 2. Peak performance: acting in full capacity of your abilities (about 30 minutes) 3. Decline: fatigue sets in and your performance drops (about 30 minutes) 4. Rest: 20 minutes for your mind to heal [Your break](success-breaks.md) doesn't have to be sedentary, but it's not a break if you're still thinking about work. ## Eat and drink well Drink plenty of water to stay alert and healthy. Avoid high-sugar drinks like juice and soda. Strategically drink caffeine: - Your cortisol level naturally drops between 9:30AM-11:30AM and 1:30PM-5:00PM. - Any caffeine up to 6 hours before bedtime will interfere with your sleep cycle. - Drink caffeine half an hour before you expect you'll need it to time the caffeine high. - Decrease the jolt by slowly drinking your coffee or switching to tea. - To stay alert, green tea, chai, and apples are more effective than coffee. - Shock your body awake by alternating between a hot and cold drink. Keep your blood sugar consistent: - Snack on healthy high-protein, low-sugar food. - Try to eat complex carbohydrates over simple ones. While walking, keep drinks from spilling by stirring them or breaking your cadence. ## Manage stress by adapting the challenge Our capacity to perform comes through how much [distress](mind-feelings-happiness-stress.md) we feel: - We feel eustress through necessary deadlines that inspire us to wake up, go to sleep, eat, and brush our teeth. - Distress is extra emotional energy devoted to uncontrollable risks. Our eustress is a response to how we perceive expectations: 1. Skill level: technical ability, familiarity, and education 2. [Personality](personality.md): extroverted personalities usually endure higher-pressure work 3. Confidence level: influenced by experience and circumstances 4. The work's complexity: more complicated work is higher-pressure Our mood is directly affected by how we interpret our balance of challenge and skill: - Low-challenge, low-skill: Apathy - Mid-challenge, low-skill: Worry - High-challenge, low-skill: Anxiety - Low-challenge, mid-skill: Boredom - High-challenge, mid-skill: Arousal - Low-challenge, high-skill: Relaxation - Mid-challenge, high-skill: Control - High-challenge, high-skill: Flow Our best results come through a state of flow. - Sometimes, depending on our mood and personality, we want flow, control, arousal, or relaxation. - Small changes can significantly affect our state of mind. On a task-by-task basis, adjust your challenge or skill: - Expect that you'll improve through research and practice. - Challenge Down: subdivide tasks or lower your standards. - Challenge Up: set time limits or group tasks together. ## Distractions destroy productivity Your mind is the only real place where you have distractions: - Both the work and distractions are endless, but your time isn't, so self-discipline is the only way to fight distractions. - Removing distractions makes self-discipline easier, but distractions are there *because* we want an excuse to stop what we're doing. - Fragmented thinking is *much* worse than interruptions, and can even damage your brain, so [focus on the present moment](awareness.md): eating, exercise, chores, etc. Calls, emails, text messages, and unexpected visitors will pull your focus from an important task: - Learn to stop yourself from chasing after unimportant distractions. - Further, cell phones compound the issue by incorporating most of them into one unified distraction device. - If it's a problem, uninstall things from your phone or schedule times to turn off your phone throughout the day. - Avoid acting on any email where you're CC'd, since the message was only intended as an FYI. - Preferably, group the CC emails into a separate folder or archive them. Most distractions are either unnecessary or will require non-urgent action: - We often find ourselves performing distractions when we don't want to do the most important tasks, and instead try to do *everything* but that thing. - Instead of acting on a distraction, simply slow down to note when a distraction is taking you from what you're trying to accomplish. Measure your interruption to avoid reacting to it: 1. How much time will the interruption take? 2. How much extra time will you need to stop and continue where you left off? 3. Until when can you postpone the interruption before it creates adverse consequences? Decisively do it, defer it, or delegate it: - Quick decision-making is critical to avoid wasting time. - Do it if it's a legitimate emergency or will take less than 2 minutes. - If it's a significant decision, defer it for at *least* 24 hours. - If you're deep in the middle of a task, specify a time to defer it to or make a note. - If it's not your expertise or is unimportant, delegate it to someone else. Manage non-urgent interruptions: - Schedule a follow-up time and date with them. - Ask the interrupter where you should place their task on your list of priorities. - Ask what you should give up to accommodate their task. - Offer to move the task up on your priority list if it's a repeat request. ### Say "no" to all unnecessary distractions Our days are filled to the brim with unnecessary agreements we've made: - We've told our past selves that we'd accomplish certain things or not do other things. - While it may feel productive to honor *everything* we want to do, it's only partly completing many projects. - Further, we tend to obsess our minds with things that aren't getting done. - Instead, we must focus on more effort toward fewer accomplishments to actually "finish" anything. Irrelevant, unimportant, and non-urgent tasks *will* destroy your day if you don't fight them: - Give suggestions or alternatives, like procrastinating the task or a creative workaround. - Give a pointed question to let them understand you're working on something important. - Ask them how it adds current value to large-scale goals. Remote work has both benefits *and* risks: - You're working in a familiar environment, so it might be less stressful, but only if you don't have [children](parenting-children.md) or a [spouse](relationships-marriage.md) interfering with your flow. - Your breaks are more enjoyable, but it's difficult to focus when you don't feel like working. - You have full control of your schedule, but you also have to viciously monitor the line between work and your personal life. Every extra feature or system makes our lives [slightly more complicated](jobs-specialization.md), so be careful with any technology you choose to use. ## Watch for "productivity porn" Many people (especially in analytical fields like IT and engineering) spend more time optimizing than working: - We receive a sense of accomplishment simply by writing to-do lists down, and that can mislead from how much we actually get done. - Get a system, [any system](success-systems.md), and simply work with it. - If that system doesn't work well, adapt it as you see a need, but *only* after you've worked with it for at least a few weeks. - If you become anxious at all, you will actually feel *less* productive, even if you're highly efficient at what you do. An excessively rigid system without any free time won't be able to adapt to the changes that naturally come with [living life](goodlife.md). If you don't take time to [enjoy life](fun.md), your misery will sabotage any performance improvements. Draw the line between a [fun](fun.md) hobby and a meaningful improvement. If you want to [buy something](money-1_why.md) that makes your life easier, it's only worth it if it *actually* helps you be more productive. Calculate how much time you'll spend improving the task versus how much time you're saving: - A task that takes 10 minutes once a month needs a whole year to "save time" if it takes 60 minutes to make it a 5-minute task. - On the other hand, a 60-second task fifty times a week shaved down to 15 seconds gives 37.5 minutes a week! Often, by *not* slowing down and having fun after working hard, people fall into a perpetual state of [near-burnout](mind-feelings-happiness-stress.md) or [creative](mind-creativity.md) bankruptcy. Be careful about tips that sound sensible but violate reality (e.g., make each day 6 hours, then you get 3 days of work out of each day). ## You must persevere Once you've established a reliable and consistent workflow, you've done the hard part of becoming successful. Bear in mind that the more you do something, the more confident you get: - You will become faster as you gain confidence in a task, but you'll often become sloppy over time. - To compensate, consistently question yourself if you start getting sloppy. Now, [keep at it](success-5_persevering.md) across days, weeks, and months.