Rebuild Your Productivity Stack: Part 2 [#86]

Last week, I left you with a cliffhanger: 

“Now, you might still have a few questions:

• How do you execute on this?
• How do you deal with the small things life throws at you in between?
• How do you ensure meetings don't take over your calendar?
• What other tools do you use?”

In case you missed it, the last newsletter was step-by-step guide to rebuilding your productivity stack. Was an absolute game changer – my productivity has at least doubled over the last week, despite taking it fairly easy. 

Let’s continue. 🤿

[6] How do you execute on your plan? 

Among my friends in Germany, one of the highest compliments one can receive is “Macher”. Translates to “maker” – a person that makes s**t happen.

Doing things instead of planning them or talking about them is the highest form of social currency. 

Plans are worthless unless they’re executed upon. All this planning work you (hopefully) did last week was meaningless if you execute this week.

Here’s how I execute:

1. Block 3 hours in the morning with zero distractions (I often go half monk mode). Sit down, open your task manager, set a timer, put your phone into a different room, and start working on the first task on the list. 
2. Stop when the timer expires or you lose focus. 
3. Continue working as hard as possible for three hours. 

If this feels exhausting, it’s because it is. Three hours of focused work on the right things is more than 90% of knowledge workers accomplish in an entire day. 

After this block, I check email & messages for the first time, and breeze through it using the Inbox Zero technique. It's fairly simple: for each email, you have 4 options:

1. Do: if it takes less than 2min to handle, just do it right away
2. Defer: if it takes more than 2min, create a task in your system to do it later
3. Delegate: if someone else can do it for you, simply forward them the email and set a reminder to follow up on it
4. Delete: my favorite action – simply deleting the email as you don't need it

This way, you breeze through your inbox in no time, and don’t have to go back to checking it again until later in the day. 

You can overengineer this like crazy, but this will do. If you use Gmail and want to dive deeper, take a look at this article I wrote six years ago:

How to configure Gmail to work for you, not against you

Email should be a tool, not a nuisance. Here’s how it works.

Dominik NitschDominik Nitsch

Afternoons are for meetings. I like to batch them aggressively, often 6 25-min meetings in a row.

Afterwards, another message processing block follows, and then – based on focus – I continue working on smaller, less demanding tasks or just call it a day. 

I also take a 2 hour lunch break to lift, and 2-3 coffee breaks in between. Which totals ~7h of actual working time. That’s not that much, but 2.5X the amount of a normal knowledge worker works productively according to a 2019 RescueTime study (2:48h per day).

Speaking of “working productively” – let’s talk about meetings. 

[7] How do you keep meetings from taking over your calendar?

The lower in the hierarchy you are, the lower the chances you can actually do something about this. But let’s try anyway. 

As mentioned above, I batch all my meetings in the afternoon. This creates really intense afternoons, but I’d rather have an intense 3 hours than a drawn-out 6. I sometimes add more meetings between 11 and 12, but rarely ever after 5pm (that’s wrap-up time) or before 11 (focused time). 

Calendar fragmentation is real, and owning slots for meetings allows you to batch them as well as possible. I also block the entire Thursday to be meeting-free, as it allows me on long-term projects. 

Doing this provides constraints on the time you can maximally spend in meetings – in my case, that’s 16 hours at the absolute max. 32 meetings – most things can be discussed in 25min if prepared properly. 

“20 minutes of preparation = 20 more IQ points” — Alex Hormozi 

Which is good: it forces you to prioritize and not just take any meeting, while always leaving time open to deal with the tasks that arise from those meetings. 

If your main job is to manage people, this should be different: meetings are your work now. 

[8] How do you deal with the small things life throws at you?

Unfortunately, we still need to spend time “humaning”: containing the entropy that results from living in a house. For this, I cannot recommend the “maintenance slot” enough. 

It’s simple: 

• Block a recurring 60-90 minutes on your calendar. 
• When you notice something that needs to be done around the house, put it on a list for the maintenance slot (I have a project for this inside Motion). 
• During the slot, check off as many of these things as possible. 

It does wonders. 

(And yes, this is again Batching in action – putting similar tasks next to each other.) 

[9] The Tool Stack

Lastly, here are some other tools I use to enhance productivity. 

• Motion: worth mentioning again, as it’s the engine that makes everything go (if you’re interested in taking a mini-course about how I set up everything in detail, fill out this form). 
• Brain.FM: soundscapes that stimulate your brainwaves to increase focus. Sounds like voodoo, but it works scarily well. (try for 1€)
• Timeular (now Early): time tracking software that givtes me data to analyze how much I actually work. What gets measured, gets managed. 

And psst – I have a goodie for you: check out the focus toolbox from Personal Productivity OS for even more tools. (Available for free to you right here, right now.) 

Call to Action

Last week, you made the plan. 

This week, you execute. 

1. Block 3 hours every day for focused work. 
2. Grab a coffee, put your phone into another room, turn on brain.fm and start a timer. 
3. Work hard. 
4. Batch your meetings. 
5. Call it a day. 

Best day to start was yesterday; second best is today. 

Let’s get after it. Happy Monday. 

LFG. 🔥

Dominik

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Whenever you're ready, there are four ways I can help you:

[1] Reclaim up to 4 hours per day and find time to do the things you've always wanted to do by enrolling into Personal Productivity OS.

[2] Hire your next Founder's Associate or other business generalist position with my startup, Generalyst Recruiting.

[3] You could also find your next startup job in Europe by simply applying as a candidate.

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