Joe's Notes

Nat Eliason Productivity

Sep 20, 20246 min read

A minimalist set of apps for getting things done

https://www.nateliason.com/blog/minimalist-apps-getting-things-done

  1. Overarching goals
    • take 1-3 months
  2. weekly review
    1. time each week to decide on goals for the week
    2. smaller chunks from the overarching goals
  3. Daily review
    1. each evening create 3-5 actions for the next day based on weekly goals

How its organized - trello board columns:

  • Goal backlog - possible future goals, not in progress
  • Overarching goals - in progress goals that take 1-3 months
  • Weekly goals
  • Daily goals
  • Daily other tasks - misc, less important than big goals
  • Today’s Accomplishments - can see how much you’re accomplishing
  • Weekly accomplishments - everything completed in a week to be reviewed during weekly review Apps
  • note taking
  • Habit tracking
  • Time tracking
    • rescuetime

How to Be Really, Really, Ridiculously Productive

https://www.nateliason.com/blog/productive

“If you’re trying to optimize around working less, find better work.”

Planning

  • area of focus

    • set annual goals/targets

  • each link goes to project details

    • green - complete
    • red - delete
    • white - in progress

  • then has next milestone

every month, choose three goals to focus on

for monthly goals, break them down to 2 sets of weekly goals

  1. the goals to do every single week
  2. the week X goals, specific to that week, usually based on monthly goals

limiting everything to 3

Calendar

  • kept mostly empty. not time blocking, just prioritizing
  • try to frontload weekly goals M-W to leave Thu-Fri to get ahead

Organizing the day

  • 2 lists
    • top priority
      • daily goals, have to be completed before good to do is touched
    • good to do

Fixed routines

  • 1hr reading after waking up, gym @4pm

“1700 words later, this is the part that most “productivity” articles focus on. But, the more I’ve refined the process, the less and less important I think most of this is. If you have well organized goals you care about, you’ll get them done. You won’t need to do silly things like the pomodoro technique, you’ll just do the work. But there are a few habits I’ve developed that I think are really helpful.”

Set hours for communicaition - 12-4 in order to get at least a few hours of deep work in every morning

Inbox Zero

  • Turn email replies into tasks
  • at the end of the day, inbox is cleaned, so it can wait till afternoon the next day
    • with a quick peak to see if there are any fires

Info processing

  • find article → read it later
  • when you feel like reading, scroll through the archive
  • prefers books to articles, however

Procrastination

  • what you do when you’re not sure what to do next
  • keep procrastination small and quick

Minimize distractions

Daily review

  • Goals
    • Asses
      • mark what you did
      • see if you need to make any adjustments
    • clear
      • closing tabs
      • capture work in process
      • clear task inbox, notes inbox, and email inbox
    • plan
      • set goals for the next day
      • from weekly goals and work in progress, check for biggest impact if done tomorrow, set those as top 3 goals, add them as top priority

Weekly review

  • reflect, clear, and plan again
  • ask what the biggest constrain on output is
  • finances review
    • categorize, split bills, cancel things
  • clear folders
    • downloads, docs, drive

Monthly review

  • weekly review, but on the 1st of the month
  • review annual goals & projects

Quantitative Life Goals: How to Plan and Finish What You Start

https://www.nateliason.com/blog/quantitative-life-goals

  1. set a time frame
    1. tends to be 1-3 mo
  2. Pick 1-3 goals
    1. “If I achieved nothing else in three months, what would I be most (satisfied with, proud of, relieved by, excited about)?”
  3. Make sure they’re smart goals
    1. How easy is it to know if you’ve achieved it?
  4. Build spreadsheet/tracking
    1. Put your goals on page 1
    2. create a separate tab for each goal
    3. Create a column for each month with intermediate goals changing the growth rate updates the monthly numbers, until the “End” cell turns green
    4. Pull all of the tabs into the first page, to see overview of goals along with ideas & todos
  5. Monitor & adjust
    1. nat adds monthly goals into trello
    2. then chunks them down into weekly tasks
    3. and do a end of month checkin

How to Set, Track, and Reach Your Goals Using Airtable

Airtable example: https://airtable.com/appSoQQDbjmKFSb8S/tblp1PF33Py6oTG4x/viwUPeWVAgglCPtY0?blocks=hide

  • Annual goals

    • aggresive - personal, physical, financial, influence, business

  • Quarterly goals

    • breakdown from annual

  • monthly goals

  • weekly & daily goals

    • not a task list, but does go in there as “most important”

  • reflecting & setting

    • don’t set next period’s goals until the end of the current period

https://www.nateliason.com/blog/tarnished-bullets “If you’re not doing anything worthwhile that you’re excited about to begin with, one of those small changes will matter. And if you are, then your passion will drive the productivity on its own.”

The Goal Setting Template for a High-Output Life

https://www.nateliason.com/blog/goal-setting

  • Vision (10y)
  • Guiding Goals (tomorrow - 3months)
  • Action steps (today)

Goal setting in 3 tiers - Create 3 goals at each level

  • Quarterly
  • Weekly
  • Daily

How to Be More Productive with a Daily System for High Output

https://www.nateliason.com/blog/productivity-daily-system

Evening Planning

  • know what you need to work on tomorrow
    • always have clarity on what you need to work on
  1. collect
    1. everything turns into tasks in Things
      1. trello, slack, emails, etc
    2. use GTD principles
      1. less than 2 mins? - Do now
      2. Read? reading list
      3. Reference? Store
      4. Task? Things
      5. None? delete
    3. these all come from calendars, project management tools, slack/comms, email, physical desk, digital desktop
  2. Process
    1. Notes inbox (PARA)
    2. Things inbox
      1. rank on importance (High, med, low TOP)
      2. set time estimate (15,30,60)
      3. move to correspoinding project or area
  3. Review
    1. go through all tasks to clean & update
      1. is in the correct area or project?
      2. has time estimate?
      3. has clear outcome?
  4. Plan
    1. Decide what you want to focus on tomorrow
      1. start with top 3
        1. if you accomplish these, the day will be a success
        2. priority → top
        3. date → tomorrow
        4. Add in high task till total is 6 hours
        5. add 1-2 hours of medium/low tasks

Morning routine

  • 1 hour to chill
    • no email, no news, no info junk
    • doing something you feel good about
      • ex. journal, reading, meditation

Daily Execution

  • Time block
    • color coded based on priority
    • adjust for how long things actually took retrospectively

  • flow through tasks in the above order
  • no email from 9-12
  • afternoon review to do a midday clear

Reverse Pomodoro

  • start a 25 min stop watch, no alarm

Batching Days - daily themes

Clean & organize your digital space if you feel overwhelmed

Daily System Implementation Guide

  1. evening review to plan tasks for tomorrow based on long term goals
  2. tag tasks based on time and priority - clear on flow of tasks
  3. plan your calendar, then adjust as the day goes on
  4. design a simple morning routine, <30mins, 2-3 habits to start your day with
  5. segment calendar based on different activities, don’t let activities slip into the wrong spot

Graph View

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