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Welcome to this week’s Q&A session.

We are excited to have you in our community.

On the weekends, we dedicate a post to help you overcome your personal productivity problems.

Here’s how it works

1. Simply describe what’s affecting your productivity in this form.

   (No emails or personal details asked).

   We keep it anonymous so that the focus is only the productivity problem.

2. Every weekend, we select one response and dedicate a post on how to solve the problem all free.

The Productivity Problem

This weekend we look at operational friction where managing different tasks across multiple apps hinders a subscriber’s progress in what really matters.

A subscriber wrote in:

Looking closely at this problem, we see that the main problem is operational friction leading to fragmentation and context switching as the subscriber essentially runs two businesses on different platforms.

• Patient care

• Consultation

With the patient care business, the subscriber books and handles client problems on Zanda while consulting is done in Xero, Microsoft Teams and Outlook.

Each time the subscriber switches between Xero, Zanda, Teams, and Outlook, they pay a cognitive tax and eventually, have little energy left to do the actual work that matters - helping their clients and developing the business.

Cal Newport in Deep Work, reveals that when we spend time switching between network tools such as email and social media, what we end up doing is shallow work that makes us feel busy while producing low-value work.

How We Could Solve This

The easiest way to solve operational friction is using platform-agnostic tools (multi-platform) that make it easy to sync functions from different apps.

The easiest one you could use is ClickUp as you can start using it free here.

#Step 1

Once you sign up to ClickUp, start by creating a workspace (where your work lives) by clicking this icon.

#Step 2

Create two new lists - Consultation Clients and Clinical Patients.

They will contain lists of tasks related to consulting work and clinical patients.

You will have these lists

#Step 3

In each of the lists, add related activities that you handle on a daily basis.

We assume meetings, updating products, and regular contact with the client.

You would have these tasks for consultation clients as an example.

#Step 4

Allocate each activity to its respective status - To-Do, In progress, Done.

You would also have this for the consultation clients.

#Step 5

In your Calendar view (third) sync your Google (personal) and Outlook calendars.

This way, you can see all meetings from Outlook and Google you scheduled in Zanda.

Zanda allows you to sync to Google Calendar. This way, you can view everything in ClickUp calendar.

• Outlook → ClickUp

• Zanda → Google Calendar → ClickUp

Any change you make in the ClickUp calendar is reflected in each of the other apps.

You only need to have one view without switching contexts.

The calendar view appears as follows:

When you click “sync with calendar”, you also access these options.

The unified calendar view ensures you can see all scheduled meetings for clients and patients in one view, eliminating context switching.

#Step 6

Make the access to meetings even more seamless in ClickUp.

Click the apps menu.

Sync Microsoft Teams for meetings as well.

The beauty is that you can create ClickUp tasks from Teams for each of the clients.

#Step 7

Use ClickUp AI note taker to generate a summary of all your meetings without leaving the app.

Once you schedule a meeting in ClickUp, activate AI notetaker and a transcript will be generated.

This way, you will reduce your apps to only 2.

• ClickUp to handle clients, patients, and recording any meetings.

• Xero for payments

As you reduce the context switching, you will have more energy to work on your business and help more clients.

It is easy to get started with ClickUp, sign up free here.

Coming Up Next Week: Dealing with high-stress environments

We look at a case study where a subscriber’s creativity is affected by the pressure to succeed while learning new systems, coupled with daily life demands.

That’s it for now.

Watch out for next week’s Q&A session in your inbox.

As always, fresh ideas are welcome. Please feel free to send in your feedback, thoughts, questions, and suggestions—I read them all!

​If you want to pass this newsletter on to a friend, here’s a link to make it easier.​

Catch you again soon.

Have a great day :)

Focus, meditate, sleep, and even relax better using Brain.fm here for 1 month free.

Welcome to this week’s Q&A session.

We are excited to have you in our community.

On the weekends, we dedicate a post to help you overcome your personal productivity problems.

Here’s how it works

1. Simply describe what’s affecting your productivity in this form.

   (No emails or personal details asked).

   We keep it anonymous so that the focus is only the productivity problem.

2. Every weekend, we select one response and dedicate a post on how to solve the problem all free.

The Productivity Problem

This weekend we look at creative friction that emerges when we try to make progress in unrelated projects simultaneously.

A subscriber wrote in:

If we zoom out, the scenario points to the problem of friction, which is the resistance between intention and execution.

The subscriber experiences creative friction as they try to juggle multiple brands (real estate and a passion project).

The problem here is treating the two as separate mental siloes and paying a cognitive tax each time they switch between them.

This is the reason they feel that daily tasks are a chore and struggle with momentum and consistency.

The Mindset to Solve Creative Friction

The first place we start is by changing our mindset related to how we can overcome friction and make good habits automatic.

In his book, Field Theory in Social Science, Kurt Lewin introduces the idea that behavior is the result of the balance between two opposing forces.

• Driving force - motivation, incentives, willpower to undertake the behavior

• Restraining force (friction) - fears, psychological barriers, environmental obstacles preventing movement

What Lewin observed was that we were more likely to engage in a desired behavior when we reduced the friction rather than when we increased the driving forces.

For example, if you wanted to keep fit, say by going to the gym daily, you would have these two opposing forces:

• Driving forces - the desire to have a fit body “I love how my friend’s body looks like”, your willpower “I can do this.”

• Restraining forces (friction) - fear, you can’t find your gym shoes, you forgot to prepare your gym clothes.

Kurt’s argument was that you could easily engage in keeping fit if you focused on reducing friction such as preparing your gym clothes the night before rather than adding to your driving forces such as desiring a fit body.

This is the strategy we consider if we want to reduce creative friction.

Our subscriber needs to reduce context switching through the rule of one.

What’s that?

Treating the two brands as one when creating content and using overlapping themes between them. Rather than create different content for real estate and your passion project, reduce the friction by using overarching themes and creating variations from it for the different projects.

If you study any big creators across multiple platforms, you will observe that most have the same content cross-posted.

What you found on X (Twitter) is what you see on Substack and LinkedIn.

However, as the two brands are separate, have one theme e.g., “Lifestyle” and create variations for the two projects.

This way, you won’t feel as if you are paying a high switching tax and losing your momentum in the process.

The second mindset that is also commonly adopted by content creators is batch processing where they plan all their content once such as on a Sunday evening.

Throughout the week, they only tweak what they have for the day and post it. We see this with founders such as Jack Dorsey who used themed days when at Twitter.

Finally, the subscriber mentions that they feel that their passion project “needs direction.” The cure for this is to bridge your real estate expertise to your personal identity.

This way, you will stop looking for the direction in a vacuum and align the two in a category of One as Dan Sullivan tells us.

Are You Missing Out on the Power of Agents?

AI is transforming the world of work and how we actually get things done today.

In 2022-2023, prompting was how you got the best from AI. As an architect, you told AI exactly what to do to give you your desired outcome.

In 2024-2025, automation became central stage as AI could be handed the tools and could search for answers on Google and give them back to us.

Today, this has changed to AI agents. You only need to give an agent a high level objective (e.g., "Research the UK construction industry's shift to electric plants and write a 2,000-word summary") and it will create its own "to-do list," executes it, fact-checks itself, and only returns when the job is done.

Why I love AI agents is that they do not replace my cognitive abilities such as critical thinking which I need to preserve.

Instead, they handle the heavy lifting of cross-searching 10 browser tabs, refine the solution and self-correct before giving me the final output I need to work on.

AI agents reduce procedural friction as the handle tasks that took me hours to complete before.

For example, if you wanted to write a new Kindle book to earn extra income on the side, you could ask an AI agent to research on the latest books and identify the gaps you could fill.

I use HyperAgent which is giving you $1000 free credits to try it out. Just fill the form about how you will use it and your account is setup.

#Step 1

This is the first screen you see once you are setup.

#Step 2

Type the objective that you would like the AI agent to accomplish for you.

I asked it:

“Research the competitive landscape for amazon kindle books relating to adopting AI and navigating changes from layoffs. Find every what real users are saying on Twitter and Reddit. Look at Amazon and see views from users. Build me an interactive comparison webpage of best performing books and a detailed breakdown page with pros, cons, and real user quotes. find the gap I should fill with a new kindle book”

#Step 3

The AI agent went to work and gave me a webpage with real results.

There are so many use cases you can also try out in your own work including designing websites, launching podcasts etc.

Here’s $1000 free credits you can use to leverage AI as a tool that enhances your work practices.

Coming Up Next Week: Operational Friction

We look at a case study where a subscriber uses multiple tools, including Zanda, Microsoft Outlook, Teams, and Google calendar but keep falling behind.

That’s it for now.

Watch out for next week’s Q&A session in your inbox.

As always, fresh ideas are welcome. Please feel free to send in your feedback, thoughts, questions, and suggestions—I read them all!

​If you want to pass this newsletter on to a friend, here’s a link to make it easier.​

Catch you again soon.

Have a great day :)

Access free credits worth $1000 you can use to create your own agents for work.

Welcome to this week’s Q&A session.

We are excited to have you in our community.

On the weekends, we dedicate a post to help you overcome your personal productivity problems.

Here’s how it works

1. Simply describe what’s affecting your productivity in this form.

   (No emails or personal details asked).

   We keep it anonymous so that the focus is only the productivity problem.

2. Every weekend, we select one response and dedicate a post on how to solve the problem all free.

This Week’s Productivity Problem

This weekend we look at finding clarity to work on what matters most.

A subscriber wrote in:

If we look closely, we see that our subscriber is showing up and getting things done by the end of the day.

However, the progress achieved is in other things that do not take them close to their dream.

How We Could Solve This

The first place we would need to adjust is the mindset.

In Essentialism, Greg McKeown introduces us to the straddling concept which describes how an organization or individual tries to adopt a new strategy without abandoning existing ones.

It is the equivalent of Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) where we add more tasks to our current workload.

The problem with straddling is that it causes us to stretch too thin as we attempt to achieve many goals simultaneously.

"In theory, this 'straddling' is a way to have it both ways. You maintain your existing strategy while simultaneously trying to adopt the strategy of a competitor." McKeown advises us.

The cure to straddling is learning how to make trade-offs.

One has to be comfortable with only doing some things rather than attempting everything. This is what clarity is all about - being in a position to say yes to what matters most while ignoring the many other things we could do.

The rule of thumb we apply when making trade-offs is the focusing question as Gary Keller tells us in The One Thing.

What is the ONE thing I can do, such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary?

Without a clear ONE thing, we risk spinning our wheels and failing to achieve our dream by the end of the day.

Therefore, our subscriber needs to first reflect on these two aspects to change their mindset:

1. They can only do a few things well.

2. They can identify their “ONE Thing” which refers to the tasks they consider most important.

How We Could Leverage Tech to Find Clarity

We consider an example of an individual who works a day job (9-5) on the weekdays and they desire to add an extra income source over the weekends by taking on gig work (freelance).

Our assumption is that they spend their weekdays fully engrossed at work and in the evenings, have little energy to create their second income stream.

Therefore, they can allocate this second income stream to the weekends when they are off work.

Consider this a guide to help you think.

#Step 1

After reflection, the individual determines that their “ONE Thing” is getting a few gig projects to create a second income stream.

Therefore, they will strive to create more time in the evenings or early morning to find gig work which they can complete over the weekend.

• 9-5 Client work (maintenance tasks) - to pay bills

• Gig work (ONE Thing) - to grow

#Step 2

We demonstrate how dashboards and automations can energize us to keep working on the goals that matter.

We use ClickUp which you can sign up free here.

Start by creating a free workspace by clicking this icon.

#Step 3

Create a new list.

It will contain lists of tasks related to 9-5 work and personal projects.

#Step 4

Create 9-5 projects currently working on.

We assume the individual is handling client A and client B work. We create a list for each.

Next, we add personal gigs as a new list.

#Step 5

In each of the Client projects, add related activities that you handle on a daily basis.

We assume meetings, updating products, and regular contact with the client.

You would have these tasks.

#Step 6

Allocate each activity to its respective status - To-Do, In progress, Done.

Also, assign client work to have a normal priority.

#Step 7

For the personal gigs, assign activities to have an Urgent priority.

#Step 8

Here’s where we now get clarity using dashboards.

Navigate to the dashboards menu icon.

Create a new dashboard and add several cards (widgets) by clicking +card at the top right.

You should see this when you click the button.

Add the following cards:

• Tasks list

• Priority breakdown

• Workload by status

• AI Brain

Our dashboard will now appear as follows.

The “My Dream” card exists by default as a quotes widget. Rename it to “My Dream.”

Now, when you click your dashboard, you can see what tasks are in progress, what is urgent, and you can query AI Brain to give you any update on your projects.

#Step 8

The final step is to create automations that send an email whenever you complete the Urgent Gigs projects.

Each time you complete a task you consider as “ONE Thing”, you can set up an automation that sends you an email with a custom message.

At the top-right corner, click the lightning ⚡️ symbol (automations)

Select email on status change

We want the trigger to be “status change” for any action.

When a task is set to “done” → send a message congratulating us to keep going with the most important tasks.

It then appears as follows.

This way, an email will be sent when you completes an urgent task, keeping you even more motivated.

It is easy to get started with ClickUp, sign up free here.

Access our Productivity Eco-system

We are evolving and would like to bring you on board with us.

We now have a second platform, Pathwise, dedicated mainly to productivity implementation tutorials.

We realized that we also needed a home for productivity tutorials you can complete at your own pace.

As a subscriber, you have a 1-month free trial to test Pathwise. No credit card details asked.

Just Sign up and start learning.

Type the productivity problem you are facing. E.g., procrastination.

We match you to the right tutorial. Complete it at your own pace.

Save your progress and continue even 1 week later.

What’s more, we have an amazing referral program.

Try it for 1 month free.

New tutorials added weekly.

Unlock your full potential with our ecosystem.

All paid subscribers access Pathwise Pro free for life. One payment gives you access to both systems.

That’s it for now.

Watch out for next week’s Q&A session in your inbox.

As always, fresh ideas are welcome. Please feel free to send in your feedback, thoughts, questions, and suggestions—I read them all!

​If you want to pass this newsletter on to a friend, here’s a link to make it easier.​

Catch you again soon.

Have a great day :)

Struggling with motivation? Try this free method to restore it.

Welcome to this week’s Q&A session.

We are excited to have you in our community.

On the weekends, we dedicate a post to help you overcome your personal productivity problems.

Here’s how it works

1. Simply describe what’s affecting your productivity in this form.

   (No emails or personal details asked).

   We keep it anonymous so that the focus is only the productivity problem.

2. Every weekend, we select one response and dedicate a post on how to solve the problem all free.

The Productivity Problem

This weekend we consider a subscriber who has several problems.

First, they are unemployed and facing debt. As a result, they are stressed and afraid to use social media due to the shame. They also apply for jobs but no callbacks are coming through.

Our focus will be on the agency aspect - the ability to take actions that intentionally influence one’s life and environment - rather than the financial bit.

We consider it the psychology of an individual who is at rock bottom who manages to find their way back up.

How We Could Solve This

Hitting rock bottom happens to even the best of us.

Take JK Rowling who was struggling with a failed marriage, a single mother, depressed, and living on government drafts in Edinburgh.

Her words serve as an important guide in finding a solution.

The first thing we see from Rowling was her persistence.

She sent her manuscripts to publishers and kept being rejected. However, she reframed the failure as a sign that she hadn’t found her fit yet.

#1 Reframe

In the subscriber’s case, they need to reframe their rejection of their job applications as data that they are yet to find their fit.

However, they would also need to adopt a mindset that they can improve the resumes sent to companies.

#2 Optimize your Resume

Most of the hiring done by companies (88%) is AI-driven. AI will filter your resume before it reaches the human recruiter.

This means that our subscriber should first consider adopting AI tools to optimize their CV before sending out more.

There are a ton of YouTube videos that show you how to optimize your CV using Claude AI. Try this one.

This would be our first priority - optimize the CV and keep applying based on your expertise.

#3 Direct your energy to what else you can do

Next, while waiting for callbacks, we would adopt Rowling’s strategy.

Despite having kids to take care of, Rowling found pockets of time when she would write her manuscripts. Sometimes, it was the two hours that her daughter slept.

She poured 100% of her remaining energy into her manuscripts.

For our subscriber, they need to build agency to control their own life by dedicating their energy towards side gigs that pay them directly for expertise. This, however, is only what they are doing as they await interviews.

Eventually, one side breaks through, either more callbacks as you optimize your CV better or completing more gigs that only require your expertise.

What’s more, there are no limits when it comes to trying out what can work for you, even using AI to create a real business.

Here are some case studies on how to leverage AI to create a business.

#4 Watch your attitude

As Viktor Frankl tells us, when everything is stripped away, we are still left with the option to change our attitude.

Keep your head high as you push further.

Create a Productive Email Environment

Sometimes, what affects your productivity is the endless distractions from ads and social media notifications on email.

What works best for the productive individual is stopping the interruptions from reaching you in the first place.

I use SaneBox, a secure tool which you can try for 30 days free here.

You only need to signup with your preferred email on their website. No further installation is needed.

Some new folders such as SaneBlackHole and SaneLater get added to your email service.

Whenever you find that a particular sender is generating more distractions and your boundaries for working are being eroded, simply drag the sender to the SaneBlackHole.

That’s all.

You will enjoy a quiet inbox without any unnecessary interruptions as you work.

Move from here

To here

Try it for 30 days free here. See the difference a clean inbox makes in your own workflow.

That’s it for now.

Watch out for next week’s Q&A session in your inbox.

As always, fresh ideas are welcome. Please feel free to send in your feedback, thoughts, questions, and suggestions—I read them all!

​If you want to pass this newsletter on to a friend, here’s a link to make it easier.​

Catch you again soon.

Have a great day :)

Convert your speech into clean, publish-ready text across every app and write up to 4× faster than typing using Wispr Flow. Start here.

Welcome to this week’s Q&A session.

We are excited to have you in our community.

On the weekends, we dedicate a post to help you overcome your personal productivity problems.

Here’s how it works

1. Simply describe what’s affecting your productivity in this form.

   (No emails or personal details asked).

   We keep it anonymous so that the focus is only the productivity problem.

2. Every weekend, we select one response and dedicate a post on how to solve the problem all free.

We are Listening

As we observed from last week’s responses, most of the issues highlighted have already been addressed.

These were some issues.

“I face cell phone distractions, feeling of dislike/overwhelm for boring or big tasks, unable to set boundaries to set time for tasks (prioritizing distractions or demands from others), schedule conflicts, having too much to do.”

“My mobile phone, also i cant sit to study for more than 20 mins.”

“All time looking the social medias e my cellphone.”

“Instagram.”

Therefore, this long weekend we point you to the existing solutions in our recap of different solutions we have already developed.

A. To learn how to manage social media distractions, read this post.

What you learn is that you will be better at avoiding social media when you can stay away from your phone during study/working sessions and when you train your mind to love slow dopamine tasks such as long-form reading.

B. To learn how to set boundaries, read this post.

As Greg McKeown tells us, “If you don't set boundaries, there will be no end to the requests people make of you. When you have clear boundaries, you are liberated to do the work that actually matters.”

The post gives you the mindset and toolset you need to set your own boundaries, ensuring you can have time for study and deep work.

C. Planning and prioritizing

One subscriber complained about problems when prioritizing.

This is mainly a prioritization and problem. To be better at prioritizing, Read this post.

What you learn is that you need the singleness of purpose when setting priorities as Gary Keller tells us.

In your case, your attention is drawn to many projects simultaneously and you lack the time to focus on what really matters.

What you need is a reminder about your top priorities for the day and learn how to concentrate and complete one task at a time.

This is how you can set it up.

#Step 1

Divide your work projects into these categories.

What you learn is that all tasks are not created equal. In your case, we can prioritize your work based on this method.

• A - Projects that matter to you

• B - Projects that have demanding stakeholders

• C - Other projects (not demanding / not personal)

#Step 2

Leverage technology as your assistant.

Move beyond pen and paper when managing your daily schedule.

Feed your tasks into ClickUp which you can sign up free here.

Once you signup, click the spaces icon (looks like Saturn 🪐).

I have 2 workspaces: 9-5 work and Personal.

Create a workspace and name it - Personal.

Create a new list - Inbox.

It will contain lists of the 5 projects you want to undertake say in a week.

#Step 3

Create new statuses in the Inbox list.

• To Do - what you planned for the week (not started yet).

• Do Now - what you need to do now (today).

• Ignore until later - what you can do later after finishing what’s really important to you.

• Done - what you completed today.

#Step 4

In your Personal workspace, create all projects you want to do that week.

Assign them to each status by clicking and selecting status.

For example, when project 1 is complete, you select it and change the status to “DONE”

You should have this.

This means that you have a structure that helps you divide your projects into:

• What matters to you (do now)

• What matters to demanding clients (do later)

#Step 5

Create a Super Agent who reminds you of your progress with each of these tasks.

Click the AI menu and select “Create New Super Agent”

What you want is the “Daily Briefer” super agent.

Tell it to scan your entire workspace.

Tell the Super agent to send you 3 priorities every morning.

The agent is now live.

Every morning, you will find an email with a written brief showing the top priorities you need to focus on daily.

This way, you will always be ahead of your tasks.

The secret is to transition from:

Planning in the mind → Planning on paper → Planning on ClickUp → SuperAgent handling every administrative task for you.

At that point, you will only need to show up and work.

D. Financial issues

For some subscribers who mentioned issues related to debt, unemployment and rising again, we have an amazing partner newsletter that talks about effective strategies to better manage wealth.

Access our Productivity Eco-system

Beyond our paid posts, we also have a second home for productivity tutorials you can complete at your own pace.

As a free subscriber, you have a 1-month free trial to test Pathwise. No credit card details asked.

Just Sign up and start learning.

Type the productivity problem you are facing. E.g., procrastination.

We match you to the right tutorial. Complete it at your own pace.

Save your progress and continue even 1 week later.

Try it for 1 month free.

New tutorials added weekly.

Unlock your full potential with our ecosystem.

All paid subscribers access Pathwise Pro free.

Coming Up Next Week: Rising from Rock Bottom.

We help a subscriber who is struggling to get back up on their feet after a difficult period.

That’s it for now.

Watch out for next week’s Q&A session in your inbox.

As always, fresh ideas are welcome. Please feel free to send in your feedback, thoughts, questions, and suggestions—I read them all!

​If you want to pass this newsletter on to a friend, here’s a link to make it easier.​

Catch you again soon.

Have a great day :)

Focus, meditate, sleep, and even relax better using Brain.fm. Test it for 14 30 days free here. No payment asked.

Welcome to this week’s Q&A session.

We are excited to have you in our community.

On the weekends, we dedicate a post to help you overcome your personal productivity problems.

Here’s how it works

1. Simply describe what’s affecting your productivity in this form.

   (No emails or personal details asked).

   We keep it anonymous so that the focus is only the productivity problem.

2. Every weekend, we select one response and dedicate a post on how to solve the problem all free.

The Productivity Problem

This weekend we look at a problem that’s becoming quite common today, the shiny object syndrome.

A subscriber wrote in:

“I increase each day getting involved with curiosity in new things that seems to be interesting.”

There are many ways the shiny object syndrome shows up.

Greg McKeown views it as the undisciplined pursuit of more. You chase success only to bump into a dozen more possibilities when you have found it.

A good example was J.K. Rowling. Before she was a highly successful writer, she spent her days writing. However, once her books reached best-seller status, she was spending most of her time in media interviews, consulting, and constant tours.

The second way would be what Cal Newport considers low-level curiosity.

You identify an interesting path that gives you a dopamine hit as you start to follow it. However, you do not generate any value from it at the end of the day.

This is what our subscriber seems to be dealing with.

They start working but somehow along the way, get pulled in by an activity that leads to low-level curiosity.

AI is a culprit where you can begin creating something new and spend so much time going down the rabbit hole only to end up with no value at the end of the day.

How We Could Solve This

Curiosity is a good thing, especially when it has these features:

• It leads us to discover new solutions to a problem we face

• It is guided by a deadline

However, when our curiosity is simply wandering into new territories without contributing to our projects or with no deadline in mind, then it starts to affect us.

It is similar to Aesop’s fable of the dog and its reflection.

The dog who looked down and saw his reflection in the water thought he saw a real dog carrying a bone much bigger than his own. He dropped his bone and sprang at the Dog in the river, only to lose it.

The idea is that if we lack filters to guide us before we embark on new pursuits, then we lose the very thing we were holding onto in the first place.

The two filters our subscriber should try adding to their workflow are:

1. Will pursuing this new task help my current project in any way?

2. How much time should I give to this new pursuit?

Doing this preserves your main projects and ensures you succeed.

However, it is also essential to allocate time to wander and chase ideas down rabbit holes with no end goal and without a deadline as Steven Kotler and Jamie Wheal tell us.

Use Tech to Track Your Time

To help you adhere to your filters, adopt innovative productive technology to track your time.

I use Rize which not only tracks how I use my time, but also prevents me from being distracted, and gives me a detailed report of my performance.

Here’s the innovative part about it.

I only need to turn it on and it works quietly in the background telling me how I spent each hour during my working session.

An example was just few minutes ago as I was writing this newsletter.

It gives you a time entry as it tracks your activities.

Why I love Rize so much is that it automatically detects when I want to move away from my task and start browsing on social media or any other unrelated site.

It interrupts my scrolling on social media with a notification that I am being distracted.

For our subscriber, you are also able to modify settings to identify all types of sites that can be considered distractions by Rize.

This way, Rize will know I am not working on my task and will interrupt my activity.

It is also a productivity coach that nudges you to take a break if you have been staring at your screen for too long.

This is not all, Rize gives me a granular-level report on how I spent each of my hours at the end of the day, week, and month.

With its dashboards, you can see how you spent your time - focus, meetings, breaks etc.

This way, you can know where to improve.

Rize is more than a time tracker. It’s a personal productivity coach who walks with you. Get started here.

Access our Productivity Eco-system

We are evolving and would like to bring you on board with us.

We now have a second platform, Pathwise, dedicated mainly to productivity implementation tutorials.

We realized that we also needed a home for productivity tutorials you can complete at your own pace.

As a subscriber, you have a 1-month free trial to test Pathwise. No credit card details asked.

Just Sign up and start learning.

Type the productivity problem you are facing. E.g., procrastination.

We match you to the right tutorial. Complete it at your own pace.

Save your progress and continue even 1 week later.

What’s more, we have an amazing referral program.

Try it for 1 month free.

New tutorials added weekly.

Unlock your full potential with our ecosystem.

All paid subscribers access Pathwise Pro free for life. One payment gives you access to both systems.

Subscribe now

That’s it for now.

Watch out for next week’s Q&A session in your inbox.

As always, fresh ideas are welcome. Please feel free to send in your feedback, thoughts, questions, and suggestions—I read them all!

​If you want to pass this newsletter on to a friend, here’s a link to make it easier.​

Catch you again soon.

Have a great day :)

Focus, meditate, sleep, and even relax better using Brain.fm. Test it free for 30 days here. No payment asked.

Welcome to this week’s Q&A session.

We are excited to have you in our community.

On the weekends, we dedicate a post to help you overcome your personal productivity problems.

Here’s how it works

1. Simply describe what’s affecting your productivity in this form.

   (No emails or personal details asked).

   We keep it anonymous so that the focus is only the productivity problem.

2. Every weekend, we select one response and dedicate a post on how to solve the problem all free.

Current Progress

So far, we have 125 responses and they continue growing.

[Please check through our posts for existing solutions before adding in a new response]

Some responses are also beyond the scope of our newsletter (productivity) and we are unable to address such. E.g., relationship advice, finance.

However, when I review the issues, most of them are issues we have already addressed before. Remember, one paid subscription gives you access to so many working productivity strategies and workflows you can adopt and begin seeing real transformation in your work.

These are some existing solutions which you can access as a paid subscriber.

• Maintaining motivation in your long-term goals here and here.

• Boosting creativity here and here.

• Bringing your ideas to life here and here.

• Procrastination here and here.

And so many more practical productivity solutions for the modern knowledge worker.

One paid subscription gives you access to:

• 2 weekly deep dives.

• Weekly summary and workbook for easy implementation

• Full access to the archive, chat, vault with all resources.

• More productivity models, frameworks, and workflows.

Subscribe now

We also have our second platform dedicated purely to productivity tutorials you can complete at your own pace and monitor your progress.

If you only want quick tutorials on any productivity issue; time management, focus, planning, etc.

Access it here.

The Productivity Problem

This weekend we look at a case where a subscriber was afraid of failing and to cope, they put off their work to pursue sports.

“Fear of failure. Putting off work to pursue sports. Playing too much sport and not getting enough work done.” the subscriber said.

The issue we tackle this weekend is how to approach tasks or projects that seem to big for us that we find other ways to escape.

Essentially, productive procrastination as Neil Foire describes it.

You might find this occurring when you spend more time in research than doing the actual work you need to.

Doing this is similar to how our subscriber loves sports as an alternative to getting the actual work done.

How We Could Solve This

We find the cure to productive procrastination in two unique solutions.

The easiest approach is to deconstruct large projects or tasks into smaller ones where you can track small wins.

If you have a big project you fear that it will fail, break it down into smaller tasks that you can complete at a time and celebrate a small win. As you stack these wins, you get the momentum to finish the project, hence overcoming the fear that you will fail.

Let’s try an example using ClickUp which you can sign up free here.

I would like to complete a 30-page e-book to sell in the next 7 days. The mere thought of it makes me doom scroll rather than get to work.

I first breakdown the task into very small steps I can complete in one session:

• Open my Word document

• Type the title

• Create the outline

• Divide the document into chapters

• Complete the first page

• Complete the next 5 pages

#Step 1:

In ClickUp, I create a workspace and name it - Personal.

I create a new list - Inbox.

It will contain lists of tasks I want to complete to finish my e-book.

#Step 2

I add the tasks to the list.

I set the due date for each task. For example, I create the word document and type the title today. I schedule to create the outline tomorrow.

#Step 3

I create 3 new statuses.

• Do Now - what I am to do now

• Do Later - what I am to do later

• Complete - what I have completed

You will have these statuses.

#Step 4

Assign the tasks to their specific statuses.

I assume I have opened my word document hence it’s complete.

#Step 5

Click the goals menu

At the top right, click “New Goal”

#Step 6

Add the specifics of the goal including title and description

#Step 7

Add a target

An example would be opening the word document

#Step 8

Here’s where the momentum gets built.

Each time you click “complete” target, some confetti is thrown up in celebration.

What you aim at → is to see the confetti thrown up as you complete your goal.

It is easy to get started with ClickUp, sign up free here.

That’s it for now.

Watch out for next week’s Q&A session in your inbox.

As always, fresh ideas are welcome. Please feel free to send in your feedback, thoughts, questions, and suggestions—I read them all!

​If you want to pass this newsletter on to a friend, here’s a link to make it easier.​

Catch you again soon.

Have a great day :)

Manage all your projects, whiteboards, and chats in one workspace. Get started with a free ClickUp workspace here.

Welcome to this week’s Q&A session.

We are excited to have you in our community.

On the weekends, we dedicate a post to help you overcome your personal productivity problems.

The Productivity Problem

This weekend we focus on emotional regulation.

One subscriber wrote in:

# Step 1: Dissecting the Problem

If we look closely at this problem, we see several issues all pointing to the lack of emotional regulation.

• Unable to focus

• Easily distracted

• Can’t keep calm

You are probably anxious about something (E.g., the deadline) and your brain keeps you in survival mode.

Other times, it might be that you have not setup boundaries in your work environment and distractions easily get to you, either physically involving teammates or apps that keep your attention fragmented.

# Step 2: Changing the Mindset

What you will learn over time is that you will be most productive when you are in a state of calm.

Most importantly, when you can achieve stillness on command as Ryan Holiday tells us.

Getting to the neuroscience behind it, Daniel Goleman reveals in Emotional Intelligence that we have two minds in our brain,

• One that thinks and

• One that feels and they determine how we perform in life.

When you find that you are anxious and can’t keep calm, the emotional brain (amygdala) is ruling.

However, when we are calm, the rational brain (prefrontal cortex) is in control.

It’s interesting that emotions such as anxiety or restlessness reveal themselves in symptoms such as a racing mind, an elevated heartbeat, and sweaty palms.

Once you notice this, name your emotion as Dr. Susan David tells us.

With your emotions labelled, you have already created a distance between you and the feeling.

“Why do I feel that I am getting anxious about this particular project?”

You are now in a better position to regain control and can make better decisions

# Step 3: Using the Right Tech

Sometimes, your inability to achieve a sense of calm might be linked to the distractions you face from your email.

If you have setup sound notifications to alert you when you receive new mail, pings from unnecessary emails may be distracting you.

Context switching, as Cal Newport argues, leads to attention residue and your ability to focus is gradually chipped away.

Today, pings from your email assault your focus.

Smart tools such as SaneBox work in the background as cognitive shields and quieten the noise in your environment so that you can remain at the driver’s seat of your rational brain.

Using SaneBox is like having a daily companion who tells you “Just work and I will take care of your inbox for you.”

When your inbox transforms from this,

to this,

Your distractions will disappear and a sense of calm from a clean inbox will emerge, creating a ripple effect that also reflects in your deep work sessions.

Give SaneBox a try, all free here for 2 weeks.

Assess whether you can better manage your emotions afterwards.

Solve Your Productivity Problems Easily

While this Q&A post addressed the “what”, our premium membership offers deeper workflows and workbooks that help you overcome your productivity problems.

For example, with the paid community, we discussed in detail how to get back to a state of control when we were anxious here and here.

Remember one paid subscription gives you:

• 2 weekly deep dives.

• Weekly summary and workbook for easy implementation

• Full access to the archive including all Q&A posts, chat, vault with all resources.

• More productivity models, frameworks, and workflows.

This is what some paid subscribers say.

We are here to help you unlock your productivity potential.

Subscribe now

This Weekend Only!

Sometimes, moving from amateur to professional isn’t because you lack the skills; it’s because you are yet to learn how to setup appropriate infrastructure to get you there.

On Monday 16th March 5pm GMT, we begin the Zero-to-Paid masterclass.

In 6 deep-dive live sessions, you will learn how to turn your writing into a sustainable revenue-generating engine no matter the size of your audience.

If you are tired of following solutions that seem not to work and want one that works, join us here

That’s it for now.

Watch out for next week’s Q&A session in your inbox.

Simply describe what’s affecting your productivity in this form. (No emails or personal details asked). We keep it anonymous so that the focus is only the productivity problem.

As always, fresh ideas are welcome. Please feel free to send in your feedback, thoughts, questions, and suggestions—I read them all!

​If you want to pass this newsletter on to a friend, here’s a link to make it easier.​

Catch you again soon.

Have a great day :)

Focus, meditate, sleep, and even relax better using Brain.fm. Test it free for 30 days here. No payment asked.

Welcome to this week’s Q&A session.

We are excited to have you in our community.

On the weekends, we dedicate a post to help you overcome your personal productivity problems.

Here’s how it works

1. Simply describe what’s affecting your productivity in this form.

   (No emails or personal details asked).

   We keep it anonymous so that the focus is only the productivity problem.

2. Every weekend, we select one response and dedicate a post on how to solve the problem all free.

Current Progress

So far, we have 120 responses and they continue growing.

[Please check through our posts for existing solutions before adding in a new response]

Some responses are also beyond the scope of our newsletter (productivity) and we are unable to address such. E.g., relationship advice, finance.

However, when I review the issues, most of them are issues we have already addressed before.

Remember, one paid subscription gives you access to so many working productivity strategies and workflows you can adopt and begin seeing real transformation in your work.

With AI disruption, we also have more solutions, models, roadmaps, and frameworks that help you navigate this change:

• A roadmap to help you pivot during disruption here and here

• A roadmap to build an adaptive mind here and here

• A model to override cognitive hijacking here and here

And so many more practical productivity solutions for the modern knowledge worker.

One paid subscription gives you access to:

• 2 weekly deep dives.

• Weekly summary and workbook for easy implementation

• Full access to the archive, chat, vault with all resources.

• More productivity models, frameworks, and workflows.

Subscribe now

The Productivity Problem

This weekend we focus on the recurrent problem of the lack of agency.

One subscriber wrote in:

# Step 1: Dissecting the Problem

If we look closely at this problem, we see several issues.

However, the main one is the loss of agency on the daughter’s part and the parent’s urgency to fulfill this role.

In The Path of Least Resistance, Robert Fritz describes agency as moving from your current reality (what is) to your vision (what you want).

The daughter lacks agency or a sense of control in influencing their future. As a result, they keep skipping applying internships and the parent is forced to to this on their behalf.

# Step 2: Changing the Mindset

How do we restore agency when we lose or seem not to have it?

Rather, we frame this question as:

How do we become motivated when we seem to have lost it?

The traditional way to think about motivation as Daniel Pink tells us, is the “carrot-and-stick” approach.

You promise a reward (carrot) if a task gets done and also threaten with punishment (stick) if it fails to be done.

However, this is ineffective because once we remove these rewards and punishments, the behavior stops.

This is the equivalent of your anger against your daughter. The threat might work temporarily, but once the punisher (you) is out of the equation, the same behavior will continue.

The more effective approach is to foster it intrinsically in your daughter in two ways.

First, is through cultivating a sense of purpose related to these internships.

Pink advises us that those who are highly productive and motivated attach their desires to causes.

Maybe your daughter can’t see what you are seeing.

Showing examples of other successful students whose lives have transformed after completing internships can help.

While a talk is the first step, the real experiences of students who have completed internships and are now working might do the trick.

Second, we now need to cultivate autonomy through small daily wins. Teresa Amabile captures it well;

This is the equivalent of what Daniel Pink calls mastery, having a sense of pursuit and making small daily wins.

# Step 3: Using the Right Tech

To cultivate autonomy through daily wins, this is where tech comes in.

What you want is an app that:

• Shows the tasks she has to do and

• Finds ways to motivate her

• Gets her to prioritize this and

• Get on with her day

One app that can help you achieve all these is ClickUp which you can sign up free here.

ClickUp is excellent because you can:

• Capture all tasks you need to do

• Prioritize them

• Use automations to motivate you

• Use agents to summarize your activities

Let’s assume that your daughter has to complete only 4 activities per day:

• Apply for an internship

• Complete a past video interview / test assignment

• Have some past time

• Do some chores/work

#Step 1:

Create a workspace in ClickUp (sign up here) and name it - Personal.

Create a new list - Inbox.

It will contain lists of tasks you want her to undertake for the day.

#Step 2

Add tasks you are complete to the Inbox list

#Step 3

Create 5 new statuses in the Inbox list.

• Backlog - internship opportunities found

• In Progress - opportunities pursuing now (interview/test)

• Done - internship interview/test completed

• Rejected - unsuccessful internship interview

• Successful - successful internship opportunity

You will have these statuses

#Step 4

Change from the list to this board layout. Click this menu

You should have this.

#Step 5

This is where the agency is restored.

When she sits to do one activity, she moves it from:

TO DO → IN PROGRESS → DONE

This movement is what Amabile calls a ‘small win’ and it makes all the difference in how one is motivated.

If she looks at her Kanban board and sees that she has completed just one more extra task by the end of the day, then she will be intrinsically motivated.

If she sees there are more successful interviews than the rejected ones, she will also feel motivated to keep trying.

#Step 6

This is the sweet spot with ClickUp.

Each time you complete a task, you can set up an automation that send you an email with a custom message.

At the top-right corner, click the lightning ⚡️ symbol (automations)

Select email on status change

We want the trigger to be “status change” for any action.

When a task is set to “done” → send a message congratulating us to keep going.

It then appears as follows.

This way, she will have an email sent when she completes a task, keeping her even more motivated.

It is easy to get started with ClickUp, sign up free here.

Is Email Management Affecting Your Productivity?

How do you manage your inbox?

Are you likely to miss out on important emails because your inbox is just too full?

Is this your reality?

• You spend hours sifting through your inbox and,

• Often, miss out on career-changing opportunities and deals tucked under notifications and newsletters you never read.

There is an intelligent way to regain your productivity through smart inbox management.

Meet SaneBox, an AI tool that works in the background and organizes your entire inbox, all without any installation.

It’s like having a daily companion who tells you “Just work and I will take care of your inbox for you.”

Your chaotic inbox now becomes this: clean and with minimal interruptions.

Simply go to the website here: SaneBox.

Select your email service, e.g., Gmail, and SaneBox handles the rest for you.

Once you setup the application, you should see these new labels under your Gmail.

Your inbox - 10 emails.

The rest of your emails are still in your inbox, just in different folders.

This way, you only focus on the 10 emails for the day and proceed to your deep work.

While others are allowed only 14 days to test the app, they are allowing you, our subscriber to test it for 1 month (30 days) free.

No payments asked.

For the next 30 days, enjoy the productivity of a smart inbox.

Use this month to see what your brain is actually capable of when it isn’t shackled to the manual labor of an inbox.

I want to try SaneBox.

That’s it for now.

Watch out for next week’s Q&A session in your inbox.

As always, fresh ideas are welcome. Please feel free to send in your feedback, thoughts, questions, and suggestions—I read them all!

​If you want to pass this newsletter on to a friend, here’s a link to make it easier.​

Catch you again soon.

Have a great day :)

Build fully functional apps and websites through simple conversations using Emergent. Describe your idea, edit the final result, and deploy. Get started here.

Welcome to this week’s Q&A session.

We are excited to have you in our community.

On the weekends, we dedicate a post to help you overcome your personal productivity problems.

Here’s how it works

1. Simply describe what’s affecting your productivity in this form.

   (No emails or personal details asked).

   We keep it anonymous so that the focus is only the productivity problem.

2. Every weekend, we select one response and dedicate a post on how to solve the problem all free.

Current Progress

So far, we have 115 responses and they continue growing.

[Please check through our posts for existing solutions before adding in a new response]

Some responses are also beyond the scope of our newsletter (productivity) and we are unable to address such. E.g., relationship advice, finance.

However, when I review the issues, most of them are issues we have already addressed before.

Remember, one paid subscription gives you access to so many working productivity strategies and workflows you can adopt and begin seeing real transformation in your work.

Recently, we have shifted our focus to developing models, roadmaps, and frameworks that help you overcome many productivity problems such as:

• A roadmap to help you pivot during disruption here and here.

• A roadmap to build an adaptive mind here and here.

• The ARCS framework to overcome poly-crisis here and here.

And so many more practical productivity solutions for the modern knowledge worker.

One paid subscription gives you access to:

• 2 weekly deep dives.

• Weekly summary and workbook for easy implementation

• Full access to the archive, chat, vault with all resources.

• More productivity models, frameworks, and workflows.

The Productivity Problem

This weekend we focus on the recurrent problem of social media addiction.

One subscriber wrote in:

Another added:

Two others also mentioned social media as a distraction to their productivity.

# Step 1: Dissecting the Problem

Looking closely at these issues, we see that social media distractions and the urge to get the dopamine hit from scrolling is the main problem.

The subscribers are simply unable to sit with themselves for a few minutes without rushing to get their phones to scroll on social media.

# Step 2: Changing the Mindset

There is an interesting book, Stolen Focus, by Johann Hari which talks about how our focus today has been stolen by the big tech companies.

In the book, Hari describes a study of American college students that investigated how they focused on different tasks.

“On average, the students would switch tasks every 65 seconds and the median time they focused on any one thing was 19 seconds,” Jonathan reported.

So, this isn’t anything new.

There are several ways we can tackle the problem of the infinite scroll and avoid being victims of social media distractions.

The first way is to design your productivity environments such that it is:

• Deliberately difficult to engage in unproductive activities such as social media scrolling.

• Effortlessly easy to engage in productive activities whether this is work or your studies.

In Digital Minimalism, Cal Newport talks about how he leaves his phone in a separate room when he needs to work.

This simple act, whether putting your phone in a drawer or in another room, actually works.

If you feel the urge to scroll on social media when you get bored, you can’t satisfy it since the device is already away from you.

During the first days, it’s going to be difficult. You might find yourself going to the other room just to scroll.

However, with practice, it becomes much easier to avoid the urge.

In the Happiness Advantage, Shawn Achor talks about a similar idea when trying to avoid snacking.

This strategy works when you are able to keep your device away from you.

However, in other circumstances, it is impossible to keep your phone or device away from you. Say, when you have to complete work on your laptop and keep feeling the urge to scroll on social media such as X or TikTok.

How do you deal then?

The first way that works is training your mind to enjoy slow dopamine activities such that you no longer have an urge to complete the fast dopamine ones.

You could try what Cal Newport in Deep Work tells us; learn to sit with yourself and embrace boredom for 5 to 10 minutes.

Keep increasing the time you can simply sit and complete non-digital-related activities. This way, you rewire your brain to work without the urgent need to seek a quick dopamine hit.

To help you accelerate this, embrace technology as your co-pilot.

#1 Rize - Track my Time and Help Avoid Distractions

I use Rize as my productivity coach who keeps me in check when working.

Each time I start a task, it quietly tracks everything I am doing and gives me a summary of what I did at a specific time.

An example, right a few minutes ago.

I was writing this newsletter and it quietly gave me a summary of a time entry suggestion related to my task.

Why I love Rize so much is that it automatically detects when I want to move away from my task and start browsing on social media or any other unrelated site.

It interrupts my scrolling on social media with a notification that I am being distracted.

This is where it can help you maintain your focus without distractions.

I can also manually adjust the kinds of activities that trigger distractions. This way, Rize will know I am not working on my task.

This is not all, Rize gives me a granular-level report on how I spent each of my hours at the end of the day.

I love looking at these insights on a weekly basis to see when I perform best.

See my previous week’s performance.

Rize also gives me actionable recommendations on a weekly basis.

On a daily basis, I also get a detailed report.

Rize is more than a time tracker. It’s a personal productivity coach who walks with you. Get started here.

#2 ClickUp - Create a list of non-digital tasks to complete

The second technology that can help you embrace slow dopamine activities is ClickUp which you can sign up free here.

#Step 1:

Create a workspace and name it - Personal.

Create a new list - Inbox.

It will contain lists of all personal projects you want to undertake for the day.

#Step 2

Add tasks you are yet to complete to the Inbox list.

Example, complete assignments and work. Also add some non-digital activities such as going for a walk or sitting in silence.

#Step 3

Create 3 new statuses in the Inbox list.

• Do Now - tasks that you are doing now.

• Non-Digital Tasks - tasks that you do to break the urge to satisfy dopamine.

• Do Later - tasks you schedule to do later.

#Step 4

Once you finish a task such as an assignment and feel the urge to scroll on social media, do the non-digital task instead.

You should have this.

As you complete non-digital activities alongside your studies, you will reduce the need to keep seeking dopamine hit activities.

It is easy to get started with ClickUp, sign up free here.

AI Can Be Your Productivity Partner

We prepared 19 AI productivity prompts to boost your productivity which are accessible here.

How it works:

• You select any AI prompt - e.g., focus.

• Copy it and paste it into your AI - Gemini, Claude, ChatGPT, GROK, etc.

• Fill in the replies AI will ask you based on your problem.

For example, using Gemini to learn how to boost your focus.

After interacting with AI, they are able to identify how to address their problem of lack of focus.

The beauty - you don’t need to know how AI prompting works. Simply copy and paste.

Then, answer all questions and you finally get an action plan you can adopt.

Access the 19 AI productivity prompts to boost your productivity here.

That’s it for now.

Watch out for next week’s Q&A session in your inbox.

As always, fresh ideas are welcome. Please feel free to send in your feedback, thoughts, questions, and suggestions—I read them all!

​If you want to pass this newsletter on to a friend, here’s a link to make it easier.​

Catch you again soon.

Have a great day :)

Build fully functional apps and websites through simple conversations using Emergent. Describe your idea, edit the final result, and deploy. Get started here.

Welcome to this week’s Q&A session.

We are excited to have you in our community.

On the weekends, we dedicate a post to help you overcome your personal productivity problems.

Here’s how it works

1. Simply describe what’s affecting your productivity in this form.

   (No emails or personal details asked).

   We keep it anonymous so that the focus is only the productivity problem.

2. Every weekend, we select one response and dedicate a post on how to solve the problem all free.

3. Subscribers are encouraged to give their views in the comments so that we all learn and improve.

Current Progress

So far, we have 108 responses and they continue growing.

[Please check through our posts for existing solutions before adding in a new response]

Some responses are also beyond the scope of our newsletter (productivity) and we are unable to address such. E.g., relationship advice, finance.

However, when I review the issues, most of them are issues we have already addressed before.

Remember, one paid subscription gives you access to so many working productivity strategies and workflows you can adopt and begin seeing real transformation in your work.

Here are just some previous practical productivity posts that address your problems:

• Building an adaptive mind here and here.

• Building motivation to work on your goals here and here.

• Reducing reliance on willpower to get things done here and here.

• Maintaining motivation in your long-term goals here and here.

• Finding clarity during crisis here and here.

And so many more practical productivity solutions for the modern knowledge worker.

Imagine a reality where you only check your inbox weekly and learn the most effective strategies that help you boost your productivity.

One paid subscription gives you:

• 2 weekly deep dives.

• Weekly summary and workbook for easy implementation

• Full access to the archive, chat, vault with all resources.

• More productivity models, frameworks, and workflows.

Subscribe now

The Productivity Problem

This weekend we focus on an interesting problem on setting boundaries and procrastination.

One subscriber wrote in:

# Step 1: Dissecting the Problem

Looking closely at your problem, we see 3 areas where you are struggling with productivity.

• Inability to transition from social connections to serious school work.

• Chasing perfection and procrastinating as a result.

• Sitting with anxiety and always trying a form of escapism to cope.

# Step 2: Changing the Mindset

The first mindset you would need to change is learning to set and reinforce boundaries with your peers.

Interacting with them is good.

However, when you are unable to set a boundary for when you need to go back to school work, then it will be constantly eroded.

McKeown tells us that boundaries only work when reinforced.

An example of a boundary could be simply telling your friends that it’s best to meet after your study sessions from 5pm and reinforcing it each time they suggest to meet earlier.

What would be best is to meet after studies rather than before your sessions. This way, you can give your brain time to recover after a deep study session while also enjoying their company.

Reinforcing the boundaries is also equally important.

Nedra Tawwab advises that we need to communicate our boundaries so that people respect our work.

The second mindset you need to change concerns procrastination.

Your struggle is that you have always tried to be the best and you keep refining your work until it gets to the level you desire it to reach.

You aren’t alone.

In 1984, writer Douglas Adams was behind schedule writing the book So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish.

I chuckled when I learned that he had in fact spent much of his time testing different types of Earl Grey tea and adjusting bathtub temperatures as he tried finding the perfect conditions for working.

Victor Hugo also loved spending his time interacting and hosting dinners rather than writing the book, The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

There are very many strategies we can use to overcome procrastination.

However, one that always works is the “shitty first draft” method. Here, you allow yourself to produce a terrible first draft that you will improve later before submission.

As you fear that your school work won’t be perfect, you keep procrastinating and never get it done.

The trick is to give yourself the permission to first create bad work before submitting it. Later, improve on this work and submit it.

Anne Lamott tells us that all writers begin with shitty first drafts.

With the paid subscribers, we also had a deep dive to overcome procrastination here and here if you need more strategies as well.

The third mindset is handling stress. Whenever you feel anxious or stressed, this is your nervous system trying to tell you something related to the task you are doing.

What works is simply learning to sit with the anxiety until it subsides rather than trying to escape it.

Marc Brackett encourages us to be emotional scientists, observing our own anxiety with curiosity.

The next time you feel anxious, pause. Try and investigate where the root cause of the anxiety is.

Oliver Burkeman also advises that we sit with our anxiety and discomfort.

Don’t wish it to go away. Stay with it.

However, sometimes, you may need to take action through active stillness strategies to find relief.

Here are some more paid posts on achieving active stillness whenever we are in the middle of stress and anxiety. Read them here and here

# Step 3: Using Tools to Manage the Problem

Tools are also your friend and can help you especially in setting boundaries and overcoming procrastination.

#Reinforcing boundaries

Sometimes, your boundaries to work may be eroded not by interruptions from friends, but un-important notifications.

It might be an ad or spam email.

What works best for the productive individual is stopping the interruptions from reaching you in the first place.

I use SaneBox, a secure tool which you can try for 30 days free here.

You only need to signup with your preferred email on their website. No further installation is needed.

Some new folders such as SaneBlackHole and SaneLater get added to your email service.

Whenever you find that a particular sender is generating more distractions and your boundaries for working are being eroded, simply drag the sender to the SaneBlackHole.

That’s all.

You will enjoy a quiet inbox without any unnecessary interruptions as you work.

Move from here

To here

Try it for 30 days free here. See the difference a clean inbox makes in your own workflow.

#Overcoming procrastination

I will demonstrate this using ClickUp which you can sign up free here.

What we want to do is have a brain dump where we can list all tasks we want to do per day and categorize them into different groups to allow you to create momentum towards delivering good work.

#Step 1:

Create a workspace and name it - Personal.

Create a new list - Inbox.

It will contain lists of all personal projects you want to undertake for the day.

#Step 2

Add tasks you are yet to decide on and that are not yet complete to the Inbox list.

I assumed you want to work, complete assignments, and be with your friends.

#Step 3

Create 3 new statuses in the Inbox list.

• B-Minus - tasks that are done but not polished.

• A+ - tasks that are done and submitted.

• Do Later - tasks you schedule to do later.

You should have these 3 statuses.

#Step 4

Once you complete an assignment, move it to B- status first.

Ensure that other tasks unrelated to your work are set to be done “later.”

To change the status of a task, simply click the task and set the status as “B- TASKS”

You should have this.

This way, you will feel that you are making progress.

Once you completed your assignments, work on moving them from “B-” to “A+” within the shortest time.

You will not be overwhelmed or procrastinate once you have a working system in place.

It is easy to get started with ClickUp, sign up free here.

AI Can Be Your Productivity Partner

We prepared 19 AI productivity prompts to boost your productivity which are accessible here.

How it works:

• You select any AI prompt - e.g., focus.

• Copy it and paste it into your AI - Gemini, Claude, ChatGPT, GROK, etc.

• Fill in the replies AI will ask you based on your problem.

For example, using Gemini to learn how to boost your focus.

After interacting with AI, they are able to identify how to address their problem of lack of focus.

The beauty - you don’t need to know how AI prompting works. Simply copy and paste.

Then, answer all questions and you finally get an action plan you can adopt.

Access the 19 AI productivity prompts to boost your productivity here.

That’s it for now.

Watch out for next week’s Q&A session in your inbox.

As always, fresh ideas are welcome. Please feel free to send in your feedback, thoughts, questions, and suggestions—I read them all!

​If you want to pass this newsletter on to a friend, here’s a link to make it easier.​

Catch you again soon.

Have a great day :)

Build fully functional apps and websites through simple conversations using Emergent. Describe your idea, edit the final result, and deploy. Get started here.

Welcome to this week’s Q&A session.

We are excited to have you in our community.

On the weekends, we dedicate a post to help you overcome your personal productivity problems as a way of giving back to our community.

Here’s how it works

1. Simply describe what’s affecting your productivity in a form which we provide.

   (No emails or personal details asked).

   We keep it strictly anonymous so that the focus is only the productivity problem.

2. Every weekend, we select one response and dedicate a post on how to solve the problem all free.

3. Subscribers are encouraged to give their views in the comments so that we all learn and improve.

Current Progress

So far, we have 108 responses.

Update: We have turned off the form temporarily to allow us to address the current productivity problems faced by our subscribers.

Once fully addressed, we will turn it back on.

Some responses are also beyond the scope of our newsletter (productivity) and we are unable to address such. E.g., relationship advice, finance.

However, when I review the issues, most of them are issues we have already addressed before.

Remember, one paid subscription gives you access to so many working productivity strategies and workflows you can adopt and begin seeing real transformation in your work.

Here are just some previous practical productivity posts that address your problems:

• Building motivation to work on your goals here and here.

• Reducing reliance on willpower to get things done here and here.

• Maintaining motivation in your long-term goals here and here.

• Finding clarity during crisis here and here.

And so many more practical productivity solutions for the modern knowledge worker.

Imagine a reality where you only check your inbox weekly and learn the most effective strategies that help you boost your productivity.

One paid subscription gives you:

• 2 weekly deep dives.

• Weekly summary and workbook for easy implementation

• Full access to the archive, chat, vault with all resources.

• More productivity models, frameworks, and workflows.

Subscribe now

The Productivity Problem

This weekend we focus on planning.

One subscriber wrote in:

A similar one also faced a planning problem.

And a third complained that they were “never ahead of their tasks.”

There was also a fourth subscriber who wrote in:

At the granular level, all these issues emphasize the lack of planning skills. However, we will help you today.

#The Mindset

The first place we need to adjust is the mindset.

In Eat That Frog, Brian Tracy reminds that whenever we fail to plan, we result to taking action without thought.

With personal goals, you may get by without a plan. However, once you start working as part of teams, each action has an impact on the rest of the team members.

A good example is with the second subscriber where their boss failed to plan meetings and clients rescheduling meetings without consulting them.

Eventually, the subscriber felt helpless and their productivity decreased with the constant change in plans.

The cure here is to embrace a few minutes to plan what you want to engage in. Whether it’s a goal you want to achieve or even how you want to spend your day.

Brian tells us that only 10-12 minutes of planning can save us up-to 120 minutes in wasted time.

During this planning session, divide your tasks based on the ABCDE method.

• A - Tasks that must be done or serious consequences will be faced

• B - Tasks that should be done

• C - Tasks that are nice to do

• D - Tasks that can be delegated

• E - Tasks that can be eliminated

Instinctively, as you divide your tasks into these categories, you learn how to prioritize and can spend time doing what really matters.

Second, when it comes to prioritizing what you need to do, consider the tasks based on the order of importance.

• Start with scheduling your priorities, e.g., your mission-critical tasks

• Then, the smaller secondary goals, e.g., those that are nice to do

Success will always demand the singleness of purpose as Garry Keller tells us.

Subscriber 4 will benefit from this insight. You need to identify what is the most important task related to building your business and first finish it before picking up another one.

For our four subscribers, they also need to take some time and identify what are the most important tasks and schedule these first in their action plans.

Subscriber 3 can try and communicate with their boss and colleagues about how the lack of planning behavior affects them.

Take some time to also communicate with the boss about your plans related to your work.

If you can show them that unplanned meetings negatively affect your performance, you may find a way to plan meetings collaboratively on your calendars.

I find this quite helpful when working with teams. Communicate clearly about your available times to avoid the minor inconveniences of unplanned meetings.

#The Toolset

Technology can also be an important partner to help you when planning.

You don’t need to carry a pen and notebook everywhere if you can plan on a digital tool.

I will demonstrate how to plan using ClickUp which you can sign up free here.

I choose ClickUp because of two main reasons.

• Its free.

• It gives you access to Super Agents - smart assistants that give you reports of how you are performing in your work.

Super Agents are so good. It’s like you hired your own personal assistant who always gives a report daily and can do more things such as sending emails on your behalf.

They can also serve as accountability partners, sending automatic messages to help you keep in check with your work.

Let’s consider subscriber 4 who is trying to build their business but has multiple ideas that they are also paying attention to and as a result, can’t focus.

Let’s call him JD (John Doe).

JD wants to set up an online business selling laptops on retail.

On paper, JD notes all activities that he must complete before he can make his first sale. (This is a simplified list as an example)

• Get a business license.

• Contact the vendors and secure relationships.

• Get laptops from vendors and stock the shop.

#Step 1

Once you sign up to ClickUp here, create a free workspace.

Navigate to the WhiteBoard Menu.

Click to create a free WhiteBoard.

#Step 2

Select templates.

#Step 3

Select Action Plan template

#Step 4

By Default, you will see this.

#Step 5

Adjust each section accordingly.

• The Goal is to setup a business.

• The ideal outcome is to make the first sale.

First, we add the 3 main tasks.

#Step 6

We then add ClickUp tasks related to each of these activities.

We will tell our super agent to remind us every day about the progress in each of these tasks.

ClickUp allows you to convert each Whiteboard item to a task.

Once converted, it gets attached to a list in your workspace.

The second alternative is to attach a task to the whiteboard item.

#Step 7

Attach all tasks.

You should have this eventually.

#Step 8

Create a Super Agent who reminds you of your progress with each of these tasks.

Click the AI menu and select “Create New Super Agent”

What you want is the “Daily Briefer” super agent.

Tell it to scan your entire workspace.

Tell the Super agent to send you 3 priorities every morning.

The agent is now live.

Every morning, you will find an email with a written brief showing the top priorities you need to focus on daily.

This way, you will always be ahead of your tasks.

The secret is to transition from:

Planning in the mind → Planning on paper → Planning on ClickUp → SuperAgent handling every administrative task for you.

At that point, you will only need to show up and work.

It is easy to get started with ClickUp, sign up free here.

That’s it for now.

Watch out for next week’s Q&A session in your inbox.

As always, fresh ideas are welcome. Please feel free to send in your feedback, thoughts, questions, and suggestions—I read them all!

​If you want to pass this newsletter on to a friend, here’s a link to make it easier.​

Catch you again soon.

Have a great day :)

Your productivity starts with intelligent inbox management. Try SaneBox for 14 30 days free here.

Welcome to this week’s Q&A session.

We are excited to have you in our community.

On the weekends, we dedicate a post to help you overcome your personal productivity problems as a way of giving back to our community.

Here’s how it works

1. Simply describe what’s affecting your productivity in a form which we provide.

   (No emails or personal details asked).

   We keep it strictly anonymous so that the focus is only the productivity problem.

2. Every weekend, we select one response and dedicate a post on how to solve the problem all free.

3. Subscribers are encouraged to give their views in the comments so that we all learn and improve.

Current Progress

So far, we have 108 responses and they continue growing.

[Please check through our posts for existing solutions before adding in a new response]

Update: We have turned off the form temporarily to allow us to address the current productivity problems faced by our subscribers.

Some responses are also beyond the scope of our newsletter (productivity) and we are unable to address such. E.g., relationship advice, finance.

However, when I review the issues, most of them are issues we have already addressed before.

Remember, one paid subscription gives you access to so many working productivity strategies and workflows you can adopt and begin seeing real transformation in your work.

Here are just some previous practical productivity posts that address your problems:

• Building motivation to work on your goals here and here.

• Reducing reliance on willpower to get things done here and here.

• Maintaining motivation in your long-term goals here and here.

• Finding clarity during crisis here and here.

And so many more practical productivity solutions for the modern knowledge worker.

Imagine a reality where you only check your inbox weekly and learn the most effective strategies that help you boost your productivity.

One paid subscription gives you:

• 2 weekly deep dives.

• Weekly summary and workbook for easy implementation

• Full access to the archive, chat, vault with all resources.

• More productivity models, frameworks, and workflows.

Subscribe now

The Productivity Problem

This weekend we focus on energy management.

One subscriber wrote in:

First, we commend the subscriber for their love and always spending time with their partner at hospital every day. Thank you.

We hope that your partner is feeling much better today.

Now, let’s analyze the issue.

If we zoom out, what we see is an energy management problem at play here.

In their book, The Power of Full Engagement, Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz advise us that negative emotions such as fear burn through more energy than positive ones such as excitement.

For our subscriber, you have no energy to do anything when you get home simply because you expended most of your energy in managing your emotions at hospital.

So, when you get home, you are trying to pour from an empty cup when trying to do other tasks.

Remember that productivity requires the whole self to be present when doing tasks. If you are struggling with emotional, spiritual, or physical problems, you will definitely be unable to concentrate or focus in other work tasks.

A solution here is to embrace activities that help you recover your energy once you get home.

Afterwards, when you are more energized, you can complete some work-related tasks.

Alternatively, if you don’t have to go to hospital everyday, you can schedule work tasks on these days.

The core strategy → Rest first before work.

But what does rest entail?

Rather than taking a nap, you can also embrace other engaging activities such as walks, gardening, painting, or reading to truly recover your energy.

After only 1 hour, you will feel energized and with less cognitive load to allow you to continue engaging in work.

Winston Churchill loved painting as a form of active rest and reset.

Psychiatrist Sue Smith also talks about how gardening helps one rest.

Experiment with different forms of active rest.

Try reading, gardening, or even painting for 1 hour after spending time in hospital.

See what works well for you and whether you have more energy to engage in work activities afterwards.

Do you struggle with time management?

Using a clock to track time is becoming old-fashioned simply because there is no intelligence.

If you allocated 1 hour to read but spent 30 minutes doom scrolling, the clock will still indicate that 1 hour was spent.

What we need instead, is a more intelligent method.

Meet Rize which tracks my time, prevents me from being distracted, and gives me a detailed report of my performance.

Once I start tracking my sessions, Rize captures everything in the background in a time entry.

For example, while I was writing this newsletter, it quietly tracked what I did and gave me a summary that I could edit, accept, or reject.

This makes it so easy to engage in deep work sessions.

It’s as if I had a coach who observed how I worked and told me to keep working and they would tell me how I spent my day.

Why I love Rize so much is that it automatically detects when I want to move away from my task and start browsing on social media or any other unrelated site.

It interrupts my scrolling on social media with a notification that I am being distracted.

I can also manually adjust the kinds of activities that trigger distractions. This way, Rize will know I am not working on my task.

This is not all, Rize gives me a granular-level report on how I spent each of my hours at the end of the day.

I love looking at these insights on a weekly basis to see when I perform best.

See my previous week’s performance.

Rize also gives me actionable recommendations on a weekly basis.

On a daily basis, I also get a detailed report. This was yesterday.

Rize is more than a time tracker. It’s a personal productivity coach who walks with you. Get started here.

That’s it for now.

Watch out for next week’s Q&A session in your inbox.

As always, fresh ideas are welcome. Please feel free to send in your feedback, thoughts, questions, and suggestions—I read them all!

​If you want to pass this newsletter on to a friend, here’s a link to make it easier.​

Catch you again soon.

Have a great day :)

Focus, meditate, sleep, and even relax better using Brain.fm. Test it free for 30 days here. No payment asked.

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