5 Ideas You Should Know From: Extreme Productivity: Boost Your Results, Reduce Your Hours by Robert C. Pozen

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The Big Ideas:

  1. Importance of articulating your goals. Make sure they are written down and able to be seen so you never have to question what you should be working on

  2. Make sure you have the big ideas right and start producing. Don’t worry if every last detail isn’t perfect. Avoid perfectionism

  3. You need to get out of the day-to-day struggle to be able to think about what really matters long term

  4. It’s critical to track your work, whether a calendar, list, etc.

  5. Minimize willpower depletion by automating or neglecting small decisions that don’t help with your long-term goals

 

Importance of articulating your goals. Make sure they are written down and able to be seen so you never have to question what you should be working on

Articulate your goals and rank them in order of priority. This helps you align your time allocations with your priorities.          

Make sure you have the big ideas right and start producing. Don’t worry if every last detail isn’t perfect. Avoid perfectionism

Don’t sweat the small stuff. Deal with low-priority items in a way that allows you to spend as little time on them as possible.

You need to get out of the day-to-day struggle to be able to think about what really matters long term

To get ahead, you also need to think about what you want to do. These may be long-term goals, such as advancing your career. Or they could be short-term goals, such as developing a new skill or meeting more people in your industry.

It’s critical to track your work, whether a calendar, list, etc.

I have seen many creative solutions for daily calendars; they all work effectively so long as they satisfy two conditions. First, your calendar must record all of your daily commitments in one place in a way that you can easily see the purpose of each appointment and the importance of each assigned task. Second, the calendar must be mobile: you must be able to carry—or have electronic access to—your calendar during the whole day, so you can easily add new items or revise your existing schedule.

Minimize willpower depletion by automating or neglecting small decisions that don’t help with your long-term goals

Over the past twenty years, various researchers have shown that making conscious decisions (“Which shirt do I want to wear?”) as well as engaging in self-control (“I’d better eat the carrots instead of the cookies!”) tire out your brain, much as a muscle fatigues from exercise.