Life Workflow

Overview

Suppose we want to hone ourselves to be as productive as possible. This might look like training for a competition or creating a startup or learning/growing in any other capacity, but acting efficiently is always in our best interest. How might we do so? What base components should we have in our life to allow us to excel elsewhere? These are the things I’ve found thus far. Keep in mind that maximizing efficiency is a means, not an end. The end is maximizing fun.

Health

Get enough sleep every day. If you don’t, repay this debt as soon as you can. Exercise as much as you can; it chemically makes you happier as a side benefit. Drink tons of water. Sleep early.

Mental Health

Figure out what affects your mood. Mine is highly dependent on how optimistic I feel for the future and how secure I feel with my friends. Surround yourself with good people who will pick you up and push you to achieve more. Talk about your problems with others and listen to theirs in turn. Care about people.

Keep a TODO list and a calendar

Our brains are disappointingly incapable of keeping track of tabs/monitoring. We’re far better at working through well-defined problems. Luckily, we can offset these operations to tools. I keep a running list of “Things to do today” and “Things to do later”. Before each task, consider – why am I doing this? What happens if I don’t?

Any time anything crosses your life, you’ve got to ask: This thing I’m thinking about doing – why am I doing it? What will happen if I don’t? The best thing is when I have something on my todo list and I think “hmm, no”. Randy Pausch

I’m lucky enough to not procrastinate much, but only because having notifications on my reminders app (Todoist) frustrates me to no end.

Get feedback

Feedback is crucial for calibrating your expectations. Find out what the people around you think about the way you do things, how they do things and instead, then consider if you’d like to incorporate them for yourself as well.