Stop hacking! That’s the best productivity advice I can give. Even if it’s counterintuitive, I stand by it. Why? Because hacking your productivity is fiddling around the margins. Sure, you can reclaim some time and space for what matters by:
- Time-boxing your tasks
- Putting your phone away
- Eating frogs
- And maybe even by purging meetings (although I’m rather doubtful about this one).
But all of the above are singular interventions with a very linear return on investment. If you aim to boost your productivity exponentially, you have to deeply think about the way you work. And to employ an integrated system to (better) manage your attention.
Having such a system may lead you, for example, to write more emails rather than less. But writing them in a way that allows you and your team to process messages more efficiently. Hacks don’t allow you to create impact and synergies at scale. An integrated system does.
Therefore: Stop productivity hacking, start productivity ‘systeming’!