Productivity

My morning ritual consists of making tea and spending at least an hour reading on my phone. The calm ambiance of the morning makes for probably the best time of the day to soak in quality knowledge. My experiments with super productivity keeps evolving with time; for instance 5 years ago my daily productivity schedule looked very strict. Here’s a sneak peek into my recent focus on outcome based outlook. I have also shared my current productivity bundle. ...

Pocket is a read-it-later application that takes your bookmarks to the next level. It lets you save content for future reading, listen to them (if you’re too tired to read), save them for eternity (even if the original source goes offline), tag by category, highlight sentences and much more. Best of all, its Freemium plan works for most light readers. But any heavy user of Pocket will realize, sooner or later, that a reminder functionality would be a great addition. Because, let’s admit it: we find a fantastic article, save it to Pocket, and then forget to go back to it on a later date. ...

First things first, one can’t be more productive just by using a few apps. The way we use it matters more than the actual products themselves. Having said that, some products are better designed to nudge us in the right direction. Again, what suits me might not suit your style of working. The motive of releasing a list is to help each other discover products that we might actually need but aren’t using already. ...

Parkinson’s law states that “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” It basically means that when we have more than enough time to complete a task, we almost always end up making the work ‘stretch’. E.g. if we need to prepare a presentation and have a month to do it, we will somehow make the task more complex, procrastinate, work at a slower pace than usual, have more ’let me first have a cup of coffee’ breaks, watch 3 seasons of an obscure crime series on Netflix and finally complete the task on the penultimate evening. ...

There are two major ways to truly soak in the knowledge present in good books viz. Write book summaries Discuss/teach it with/to someone who can comprehend Finding someone who’s really interested in the same topic, share the same mental wavelength, have the intellectual prowess to comprehend/question/add their own independent thinking to the discussion is not always possible. Thankfully, you don’t need another person to write book summaries. And even if you find someone to discuss, book summaries are so powerful that you can’t possibly not write them. ...

ToDo apps actually work well if you figure out your own personalized way of using it effectively. Unless you’re living under a rock without an internet connection, no responsibilities, no recurring thoughts, no tasks to complete, no goals to chase, no motivation or the need to actually ‘do’ anything, in my humble opinion, you must use a ToDo app. Here’s why everyone should use a ToDo app Need more convincing? Let me share the biggest reason why everyone must be using one. ...

After my last post on super productivity, a few people were curious about waking up at 5 in the morning. The common question was, “How to wake up early?” Well, there aren’t any tricks per se, but a few things from my own experience/reading might help you fine-tune your biological clock, get you motivated & achieve super productivity. 1. Go to bed early A good deep sleep of around 4-5 hours is sufficient for an adult. So, if you’re planning to get up at 5, retire early. 10:30 to 11:00 is the ideal period. ...

Lately, I’ve realized that I have read a lot of material on two topics viz. a. How to stop procrastinating b. How to be productive And I was wondering if it would make sense to share my progress with the world so that I get more inputs & suggestions from people who’re trying something similar. So here’s the plan: I will keep sharing life hacks, tricks, tools, utilities, apps, habits, daily regimes, factoids, scientific findings and everything in between on how to be more productive in life. ...

Before I quit my job, I worked for two software companies for 4.5 years and I followed one rule throughout: reach and leave office on time. Six ‘o clock and shut the lid of my laptop, pack my backs, pick my helmet and stroll away gently as most of my colleagues look at me in awe. Most would often say, “Tera sahi hai yaar, time pe nikal leta hai” ( “Your life is set mate, you leave on time”). Some would even consider me gutsy. ...