(2016-05-04) Pearson Only3 Ways To Be More Productive

Taylor Pearson: The Only 3 Ways to be More Productive

How to Be More Productive at Work:

At the beginning of 2015, author Nassim Taleb tweeted “Use courage and wisdom, not labor, to make money.” It encapsulated the only three ways to be more productive.

• 1. Labor – (AKA work harder)
• 2. Wisdom – (AKA work smarter)
• 3. Courage

1. Labor (AKA Work Harder)

it’s the most visible form of productivity

Once you get past a certain number of hours per week though (10-20 hours per week or roughly 2-3 hours per day), you start to drop off. You use up your best cognitive energy and you can still do productive work, but not at the highest level you are capable of.

At some point, you start to be negatively productive

2. Wisdom (Work Smart, Not Harder)

Working smarter can be divided into two categories: learning and productivity hacks.

Learning

Learning itself includes two things: consuming information to gain explicit knowledge and doing projects using that information to gain tacit knowledge

Consuming information lets you learn from the mistakes of others more quickly and inexpensively than doing it yourself.

However, it’s not enough just to read the books. Reading books gives you explicit knowledge, knowledge that can be readily articulated and verbalized. It does not give you tacit knowledge

Productivity Hacks

3. Courage

All these things help. I use all of them and am more productive as a result. However, they can also be a dangerous distraction by making you feel like you’re being more productive when you aren’t.

Choosing to commit to a single project and running with it takes courage. Many people say they can’t pick a project because they “have lots of interests” or “too many ideas.” But what does this really have to do with being unwilling to focus? We all like lots of different foods, yet we always manage to pick something on the menu for dinner.

It’s an ironic paradox because by choosing to focus on many things, we guarantee that none will work. In committing to many things, we commit to failure

Tom Morkes, a friend and military veteran who served in Iraq, said he was more afraid the first time he published a blog post than when he went on patrol in an enemy controlled portion of a city at war.