Sahil Bloom once said, “No one cares about your deep work ritual or morning routine if you don’t get sh*t done. Input quality may get you social media likes, but output quality (and quantity) is what gets you paid.”

Do you feel like you have time but you don’t produce results?

Have you ever painstakingly gathered time through early mornings, quick lunches, fast-walking - only for that time to be wasted?

It happens to everyone.

One time I sat down to work, I opened up Chrome, realized I needed to clean my Desktop because the screenshots annoyed me.

Then I opened up Gmail and a read a few emails.

And then took a quick break, during which I scrolled on TikTok for a few minutes… and suddenly an hour had gone by.

Here’s the problem that you and I have: despite having 2 hours free on your calendar, you actually only end up with 30 minutes of ACTUAL work time.

Enough time to get into the groove, but not enough to stay in it.

There’s far too many things to do and far too many distractions (including “productive” distractions) that steal your time and energy.

Fixing this problem could allow you spend LESS hours doing work (which means more time spent with family, friends, and doing things you like) - and MORE quality output.

Over the past seven years, I’ve collected a few tools from the experts to give yourself the best chance of producing quality output.

The reason I say quality not quantity is because because a large quantity of garbage is still garbage.

I’m focused on RESULTS here, not output.

The tools to maximize your personal productivity fall into two steps steps:

how to gain and protect your attention (so you don’t white-knuckle your way through work) = playing defense
how to prioritize your attention to produce the most results = playing offense

This article is long (3000 words), and is structured as many short chapters. I recommend you to read it over a few days, and actually use the frameworks I’ll share below.

Each framework is a day’s worth of writing work - don’t let my work go wasted!

Let’s get into it.

Play Defense

Let’s first build our shield: our protective dome against the town of personal productivity.

The enemy: TikTok, junk food, junk products, breaking news, push notifications, text messages. emails… all designed to get you to look. Just for a split second!

The treasure: attention.

The currency of life is attention.

It’s more important than time. It’s definitely more important than money.

How can you be productive when literally everything works against your focused attention?

The second treasure is energy.

Energy is what you spend to put your attention to good use.

Before you do anything else, protect your attention and energy.

That’s where our “defensive” strategies come in.

1. Address the low hanging fruit

Low hanging fruit means things that are easy to do, and provide the most gain.

In fact, I’ll guarantee that you’ll see results within a day of doing them.

Here’s what to do. Completely remove attention stealers.

Step 1: Clear your phone screens of apps. Only keep the ones you actually use every day. You can always find the rest through the search bar.

Step 2: Cancel all the push notifications that don’t provide value. Personally, I’m on DND 24/7.

Step 3: Clear your computer Desktop once and for all. All the screenshots, folders, and more. Clean your Downloads folder while you’re at it. If you’re running out storage, clear things out, get Google Drive.

Step 4: Clear your desk and keep it clear. Clear desk, clear mind. Genuinely. Try it.

I know some creatives have messy desks and they’re okay with it. But you’re not them. Just trust me, clear your desk. Get a junk drawer and throw all your stuff in there.

That’s all. This might be the most productive thing you do in the next two hours.

Don’t skip it (I’ll wait).

Thank me later!

2. Close the open loops

A long time ago, I learnt a trick to get rid of songs that are stuck in your head.

It’s simple: you listen to the ending of the song. The reason why is the Zeigarnik effect:

a psychological phenomenon stating that people remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than completed tasks.

Let’s saying you’ve been meaning to email someone, or call someone, or go to grocery store.

Even if you’re not actively thinking about that task, it’s going to steal from your attention.

You don’t realize it, but your subconscious is busy computing in the background - just like a song stuck in your head.

Here’s how to close an open loop.

Either complete a unfinished task from your todo-list, or just cross it out.

Now, your subconscious is free to think about more important things.

Have you ever noticed that the answer to a question or an idea just suddenly comes to you? That’s the subconscious at work.

Closing loops helps particularly with creative tasks, like product ideation, writing or poetry.

It also helps with the difficult decisions: do I take the job, do I move out, do I proceed with this idea?

Try it. You’ll open up a hell of a lot of brain power that you otherwise occupy with pointless tasks.

3. Conserve your energy so you can do hard things

Naval Ravikant once said, “Work like a lion, not a cow.”

The biggest lie that the corporate world gave us is that you need to be productive for 8 hours a day to produce results.

People say that life is a marathon, not a sprint.

I want to reframe it to the following:

Life is many sprints that end up looking like a marathon.

If you ran a marathon for 16 hours of the day (8 hours sleeping) can you imagine how exhausted you’d be?

You won’t get far, and you definitely won’t win.

Here’s where it applies to your work.

Unless you’re on prescription stimulants, you can’t be high energy all the time.

Some tasks require a “high activation energy” to do.

These tasks require a great deal of courage, energy, and intelligence - but for a short amount of time.

Think about interviews, public speaking, sales calls, writing an amazing email, critical debugging, or a 1-rep max lift.

If you live on that level of energy for your entire life, you’re going to burn out and not have a good a time.

And yet, most make-or-break moments of our life come down to these.

Instead of living “somewhere in the middle” - why not conserve energy and prioritize ruthlessly so we’re prepared for the moments where we really need to be present?

If you’ve decided to do something, why not do it right?

Why not wait for the right opportunity and put every ounce of your energy to take advantage of it?

4. Prevent burn out through the “energy balance sheet”

Companies keep a “balance sheet.” It tracks their financial health - how well they’re doing at any point in time.

Wouldn’t it be helpful to track our energy in this way too?

Not through an Excel spreadsheet, but rather, a personal record of when/how you spend energy and when you gain it.

What activities consume the most and give you the most energy, both physical and mental?

By knowing that, you can shape your life to contain activities that give you the most energy - or you risk burnout.

Hard tasks do not necessarily consume more energy than they give you.

A runner may come out of a marathon extremely tired, but the sense of accomplishment they get may give them enough mental energy to now do other tasks better.

In fact, we are defined as the activities that give us the most energy.

Extroverts are defined as people that gain energy through socialization with other people.

Introverts are defined as people that gain energy through silence, reflection, and time spend in meditation.

Neither is better than the other.

What’s important is that your “energy balance sheet” is positive.

For instance, I burn out from my 9-5. I don’t like to be sedentary, I don’t like to talk all day, and I don’t like to listen to what other people tell me to do (what to do, when to take a break, etc.).

As a result I lift weights, spend time in silence, and do self-driven creative tasks to avoid burn out.

Find out gives you energy, and schedule more of it on your calendar.

Play Offense

So far, you’ve done all the “defense” work to protect your town against the enemy.

Now you’re ready to go out and conquer.

That’s where “offense” strategies come in.

Let’s get into it.

1. “One Big Thing” (OBT)

OBT (noun): what’s the one thing on my list that if I nailed it, would make the whole day a success?

I got this one from Shaan Puri, in his “All Access Pass” newsletter (awesome read, not so available on the internet, so I compiled in an ebook here!).

He himself credits it to Peter Thiel, who would require every employee to work on a single problem a day and walk out of meetings if they discuss anything apart from that problem.

Instead of a to-do list, which feeds the idea of “grinding” (trying to optimize for quantity of output) you pick an OBT for the day.

You can even set it the night before.

Make it clear. What’s the most important task that needs to get done today?

Do your OBT as soon as possible.

If you’re done before noon, you’ve already won the day.

The rest is just bonus.

2. “Sacred Hours”

When do you actually do your OBT?

During your sacred hours.

These are 2-4 hours that no one bothers you. No meetings, texting, scrolling, or talking, preferably in the morning.

For instance, my sacred hours are right after I write, lift, and eat breakfast.

You may know this as “deep work” hours.

In fact, Alex Hormozi splits his day like this too.

Deep work in the morning, and meetings in the afternoon.

It’s easy when you work alone, but it’s still possible when you have many collaborators. Here’s the trick:

Instead of scheduling calls in the morning, work backwards.

If you want to end at 5 p.m., your first meeting should be at 4 p.m., the next one at 3:30, and so on.

Instead of working and getting distracted - which affects the quality and speed of your output - why not just schedule a few sacred hours?

Speaking of mornings, here’s how to use it to build good habits and get hard tasks done every day.

3. Eat the frog early

As Sahil Bloom would say, “There’s no such thing as a loser who wakes up at 5am and works out.”

It’s not just about exercise. If you want to build a habit, or do something that you usually won’t do, do it in the morning.

For instance, I only write in the morning.

My brain is clear. I’m censoring myself less, and my mornings are my “sacred hours” where no one can bother me.

If you want to build an exercise habit, do it first thing in the morning.

If you plan to do something important in the morning, you force yourself to have good sleep.

If you have good sleep, you have more brainpower to do hard tasks, and you have fewer interruptions.

Here’s how to get started.

First, fix your sleep schedule.

Then, plan to do the habit you want to build first thing in the morning.

“Eat the frog” as early as possible.

4. Separate the planning from the doing

Planning is like getting Claude Opus to write out a spec/implementation doc. Doing is getting Haiku to actually follow the doc. What you get is fast, cheap, and high quality results.

Here’s the human equivalent.

When you’re fresh and energized, clear of decision fatigue - especially in the morning - you’re Opus. Every time else, you’re Haiku.

There’s two types of decisions you make:

Strategic (long-term) - decide direction, prioritize which projects - Opus mode. Do this first thing in the morning.
Operational (short-term) - prioritize small tasks - Haiku mode. Do this at the end of the day, planning for the next day.

Separate the decision-making (<== important to get right!) from the execution.

Then, you can spec out the task. If AI can do it, tell it to write the spec.

If it can’t, just write out the FIRST step you need to take to get started.

Here’s why: if you make the steps low-barrier enough, you’ll do them.

The classic example of this is to leave your gym shoes and clothes ready the night before a work out. In the morning, you put them on before you can hesitate.

By doing the above, you’ve planned out what you’re doing, you’ve decided it’s important, AND you’re not using deep-work time to figure out the steps.

You’re golden.

If you like the idea of writing down just the FIRST step, check out the following:

5. The A-B-Z method

Here’s another one from Shaan Puri. He says all you need to know is:

A = where are you now
B = next small step
Z = end vision

Instead of making a “grand plan” for B…Z, just know the next small step to take.

Gain momentum.

For instance, for my TikTok distribution tool project I wrote,

A: I can now post decent carousels.
B: I have to improve the copy on the carousels to get more engagement.
Z: I can schedule long-term campaigns for any product.

Alex Hormozi says,

When you’re not sure what to do…
Doing more is always a great default.
Action creates insights.
Insights creates new actions.

Nobody is wise enough to know the right steps to take more than like 2 steps away…

The reality is, taking a step uncovers the next step, and so on.

But what if you know exactly what to do and still can’t bring yourself to do it?

6. Find the “minimum viable action”

Even if you know where you are (A), what you want (Z), and the next step (B), sometimes it’s hard to actually do it.

For instance, to create a successful blog, from scratch, you need to write. The immediate next step for that is to write one article.

Ok, cool. How hard is it to do that?

You try it for a day on the weekend. You walk to a cafe at 9am and order an iced latte. You sit down, stretch your fingers, write 1000 words (solid!), and call it a day at 12pm.

Then, you don’t come back to it until a month later. You just didn’t find another three focused hours to sit down and write. I mean, you have other responsibilities. Plus, it’s your Saturday. You deserve to sleep in.

Same thing happens when you want to eat healthier. You tried it once, but it just takes so long to prepare everything - you don’t have the time or energy to do it again.

Or when you want to workout, or run - you imagine it’s going to take so long to prepare for it, do it, and take a shower after, that you never do it.

What you need to do is lower the bar. To something insanely small.

For writing, start with 10 seconds. No need to prepare anything. Just set a timer, start, and done.

Either of two things happen once those 10 seconds are done.

You keep going, because who writes for just 10 seconds?
You stop, but you do it again tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after. You build a habit. Then, you go for a minute instead of 10 seconds.

Plus, I find that the 10 seconds of stimuli gets you to think about it for the rest of the day, which makes you more excited to write the next day.

In fact, for the month or so that I’ve been writing nearly every day, I only aim to write 1 paragraph/day.

For eating healthier, you could start with just 1 extra ingredient, or make a new side dish, or replace one snack. Make the bar as low as you need.

For exercise, you could start with just 30 mins/week.

What’s important is to start and give yourself a win.

In consumer apps, I aim to give the user a “first win” within the first 10 minutes of using the app (a streak, a completed analysis, a piece of useful information). The sooner the better. It increases the chances that they open the app a second time, because they feel rewarded and see signs of progress.

Do that for yourself - anything that lets you see progress in a habit you’ve meant to build, no matter how small.

Try it today, don’t just nod yes and forget about it!

PS: if you didn’t take any “defensive” productivity actions - find the minimum viable action to take for a single task within that.

7. Build an intrinsic love for pain

Honestly, when I see that something’s really hard to do, especially regularly, it makes me happy. That’s my comparative advantage.

When things are hard, fewer people do it. Even fewer people do it regularly.

If fewer people do it regularly, that habit is more valuable.

What if you could enjoy hard things, just because they’re hard?

If it’s hard, it’s worth doing. It makes you feel rewarded. It builds self-esteem and confidence.

Plus, the person that enjoys running will always run further (in the long-term) than the person that doesn’t enjoy it.

Aim to love the pain of weight-lifting, the pain of learning a hard concept, or the pain of filming and editing content.

Develop an intrinsic love for pain.

The best part is, you get to pick what type of pain you want in your life. You don’t have to be in pain 24/7.

Just by doing that, you’re above 90% of the population. Seriously.

If you made it this far, congratulations. You really care about your productivity.

I’ve dumped everything I’ve read and figured out over the years into a 2600 word blog post. I tried to make it as enjoyable, and immediately useful as I can.

Despite all that, the most important thing is that you start now. If you don’t you risk forgetting what you read, thus cancelling out all the hard work you just did.

Don’t disappoint future you. Clean up your attention, pick a task you truly want to do, figure out the next step, and get started with 10 seconds of it.

I’d love to know if this article helped, or how it could be better. Let me know!

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