Habits - Pick your priorities carefully

Too often, we do certain things as an excuse to avoid the really difficult question: “Do I actually need to be doing this?” Ironically, some of these things may be related to productivity, time management, and optimization.

“Being busy is a form of laziness — a form of lazy thinking and indiscriminate action.” - Tim Ferris

Consider your priorities for the day ahead

When you wake up in the morning, and when everyone in the house is still asleep, take 15 minutes. Run through the mental exercise of making two to-do lists: One is the list of things that are important, items in your daily life and at work that need your attention, and one list of things that are urgent. Anything that falls on both lists takes priority for the day.

Looking at your time holistically when you can think clearly allows you to set realistic goals around what you need to accomplish, and identify what tasks add the most value to your personal and professional life. Then, you can prioritisize those tasks.

Good tasks and bad tasks

Good tasks	Bad tasks
Move us towards goals	Mundane - day-to-day activities. Necessary because they keep the wheels oiled.
Do them early in the day	Do them towards the end of the day
Should be done every day or 6 days of the week	Can skip them here and there.
e.g.	e.g.
coding POCs	balancing ledgers, accounts
exercise	reading articles
	logging hours in timesheets
	household chores - taking trash out, cleaning stuff in the house, etc.
	paying bills
	notes from books

Do menial tasks in between continuous chunks of deep work

Boring, menial tasks can be worked on in non-continuous chunks of time.

When we are in deep work, we shouldn’t switch to another serious, important task. However, task switching from a serious task to a boring task works well when working on something serious for continuous periods of time. This is where we can plan to do boring, menial, mundane tasks (whatever that may be at that point of time).

With this approach, it helps to knock the menial tasks out of the way - as well as take the mind off of the serious task for small breaks.

Maintaining a list of menial tasks to be done. Keep looking at the list of things to do frequently and juggle between some of them to avoid boredom while at the same time, making progress on them.

Dealing with always important, never urgent tasks

What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important. -Dwight Eisenhower

Important tasks are things that contribute to our long-term mission, values, and goals. - Brett McKay

The Eisenhower Box: How to be More Productive

Eisenhower’s strategy for taking action and organizing your tasks is simple. Using the decision matrix below, you will separate your actions based on four possibilities.

1. Urgent and important (tasks you will do immediately).
2. Important, but not urgent (tasks you will schedule to do later).
3. Urgent, but not important (tasks you will delegate to someone else).
4. Neither urgent nor important (tasks that you will eliminate).

There are many factors that contribute to success, but you can make a strong argument that consistently accomplishing tasks which are important, but not urgent is the one ability that separates top performers from everyone else.

Consider how many tasks are important to our progress, but not urgent in our daily lives.

1. Getting a workout in will never feel like an urgent task on any particular day, but exercising consistently will change your health and your life.
2. Cleaning your office space or kitchen will rarely feel like an immediate need, but reducing clutter can clear your mind and reduce chronic stress.
3. Practicing the fundamentals of your craft is often boring, but when you master these core skills you begin to separate yourself from your competitors.

Eisenhower matrix pushes us to ask that question about the things that we are doing.

Tags

1. Fixed Volume Approach to Productivity using a Primary TO-DO list with Limited items
2. Habits - Confront harsh challenges and difficult things to transform yourself
3. Your daily and normal life can only be filled with those things you highly value
4. Habits - Start your day with fighting the top priority Dragon first