Five Magical Productivity Techniques
That actually work!
This is the fifth of five ‘Monday Messages’ about productivity, the last in my short series on the topic. Appropriately, this week I am looking at five common productivity techniques that may be useful tools.
My coaching clients are all smart people. They are mostly professionals, lawyers, business owners and company directors. One thing is for sure - they never struggle because of a lack of brainpower or work ethic. Typically, they struggle to get things done because their attention is constantly fragmented.
Notifications. Emails. Text messages. Meetings. Knocks on the door from people needing guidance. Low-grade administrative work. The demands on their time are many and various, and they combine to create a working day that is always busy but rarely productive.
I would be very wealthy if I had a pound for every client who has told me that they will come into work early and stay late, just because they find that it’s the only way to grab a few precious hours of peace and quiet when they can actually accomplish something.
Productivity is almost never about working harder. More often, it is about setting boundaries and creating conditions in which focus has at least half a chance of blossoming.
Over the years several practical techniques have emerged that help people protect their attention and use it more deliberately.
I’ve chosen five methods to highlight in this article - the Pomodoro Technique, time blocking, body doubling, Cal Newport’s concept of Deep Work, and Inbox Zero – but there are many more.
1. Time Blocking
Time blocking is my personal favourite. It rules my life. Instead of maintaining a long to-do list and deciding moment by moment what to work on next, the day is pre-divided into dedicated blocks of time, each assigned to specific activities.
For example, a morning block might be reserved for drafting or strategic thinking, a later block for calls or meetings, and a defined period for administrative tasks and email.
This removes a surprising amount of friction. Decisions about what to work on have already been made. The day becomes a series of commitments to forms of work rather than a constant negotiation with competing demands.
Shane Parrish has a powerful phrase for this: “Don’t tell me your priorities, show me your calendar”.
Time is finite. If something is important, it must occupy space in the diary. I would also add my own rule to this:
White space is a lie.
If you have ‘white space’ in your calendar it’s 99% certain to be gobbled up by someone else’s priorities or someone stealing your time. You must set very clear boundaries. The easiest way to set these boundaries is to predefine what your calendar time ought to be used for.
In short: someone is always in control of your calendar. Make sure it is you.
2. Deep Work
Cal Newport’s concept of Deep Work addresses the quality of attention itself. Deep Work refers to periods of intense, undistracted concentration devoted to cognitively demanding tasks.
This is the kind of work that produces real creativity, problem solving, innovation, insight and value. Writing, designing, analysing complex issues, solving difficult problems or developing original ideas all require sustained focus.
Modern working environments and systems are largely structured around shallow activity. Emails, messaging platforms and frequent meetings can (and do) divide and dilute your attention and make it difficult to reach the depth of concentration required for meaningful work.
Newport’s argument is that deep work must be intentionally protected. That means creating defined periods where distractions are removed, notifications are silenced and communication channels are temporarily closed.
This works well in concert with the time blocking noted above. Newport suggests blocking out two-hour sessions and treating them as sacrosanct (think of them as a meeting with your most important client … which in a way, they are - they are meetings for the benefit of ‘future you’, and you don’t have any clients more important than your own future self. You would never cancel or steal time from a meeting with your most important client, would you?)
If this seems impractical then don’t despair; even a short session (say, 30-minutes) of protected deep work time each day can significantly increase the quality and quantity of your meaningful output.
3. Pomodoro Technique
The Pomodoro Technique is built around the simple idea that sustained concentration is difficult for many people. Rather than attempting to work for long uninterrupted periods, you divide work into short, focused intervals.
The name comes from those plastic clockwork timers you may have seen in some people’s kitchens; the ones shaped to look like a bright red tomato. There are, however, pomodoro apps you can get for your phone these days. I do like a physical timer, though. There is something about the tactile nature of twisting the top and setting it going that feels more ‘real’ than the digital equivalent.
Typically, the structure is twenty-five minutes of uninterrupted work followed by a five-minute break.
After four cycles (two-hours in total) a longer break is taken. Many people find there is a psychological benefit to breaking work up into manageable chunks. Twenty-five minutes feels less daunting than a two-hour sprint. It reduces the resistance that often accompanies starting a difficult task. Once the timer begins, the only commitment you are making is to remain focused until the session ends.
It’s a way to do what the cliché tells us to do – to eat the elephant one bite at a time. Tasks that might otherwise be postponed are simply started, continued and then completed, one focused interval after another.
4. Inbox Zero
Next, Inbox Zero addresses a source of significant cognitive load that affects almost everyone I know … the email inbox. A cluttered space that is like a festering hotbed of anxiety-inducing horror for many of us.
Inbox Zero sounds daunting, but the name doesn’t entirely reflect the aim.
Your goal is not literally to always have zero emails – it is to ensure that the inbox itself does not function as a de facto unstructured task list. Each email is processed using a simple set of decisions. It is either deleted, delegated, or (if it requires less than a couple of minutes) responded to immediately. Alternatively, it can be moved into a defined task system for later action.
The result is an inbox that is nothing more than a ‘landing strip’ for emails. My preference is for each email to be triaged into a relevant folder. The trick is to only have a very small number of folders. Avoid the trap of having a separate folder for each correspondent or for important clients. The basic rule is to have three to five folders, and no more than that.
Thinking about the inbox with my ‘landing strip’ metaphor, the five folder titles that I like are:
1. Preparing for take off – any emails relating to matters that are on the runway, pending or initialising.
2. In flight – any emails relating to matters that are live.
3. Landed – any emails related to matters that have recently completed.
4. Inflight entertainment – any emails that are circulars, newsletters or things that I think I might want to read when I have a few minutes spare.
5. Money – anything to do with expenses or invoices or similar that I need to deal with.
5. Body Doubling
Finally, Body Doubling is less widely known but, for some people, it is a remarkably effective technique. My wife absolutely swears by this method (as do some of my clients). For me, I confess, it does nothing, but it’s so effective for so many people that it would be wrong of me not to mention it.
Body Doubling simply involves working alongside another person, either physically or virtually, while each individual focuses on their own tasks. For some people, the mere presence of another person (even virtually through Teams, Zoom, or a dedicated service like FlowClub) changes behaviour in powerful ways. It creates a sense of accountability. Distractions become less attractive. Attention stabilises.
For people who work independently or remotely, body doubling can recreate some of the productive atmosphere that naturally exists in traditional shared workplaces. Many people schedule virtual working sessions where cameras remain on, and each participant simply gets on with their work.
Conclusion
None of these techniques is a silver bullet, and some work better than others for different people (the inbox zero technique I’ve briefly outlined above, for example, doesn’t work for those of my clients who are lawyers – they are required to file all correspondence in the relevant matter files for their clients, so the technique is simply not practicable for them).
The important message, here, is that productivity rarely improves through a single change, it’s all about building a skill stack and helpful habits. You need a series of techniques that complement one another and which work for you.
Attention and time are our most valuable resources. Instead of ‘paying’ attention and ‘spending’ time, you can invest both commodities wisely and the ROI is that your productivity will improve as a natural consequence.
Good luck.