Intro to The Productivity Playbook

Watch any interview with a successful entrepreneur, or ask executives the success to their start-up, or browse some TED talks about the determinants of success, and you’ll probably notice a pattern. The most common key to success is habits: disciplined and consistent behavior that contributes to long-term goals.

Even if your goals are not as lofty as starting a company or changing the world, habits are still a necessary ingredient in the recipe of growth. If you want to do well in school, pick up new hobbies or skills, or become more knowledgeable about certain topics, then you’ll need to have some habits to keep you on track. Most things that are worthwhile take sustained work to achieve and habits make work easier. This includes self-care - going to the gym, meditating, cooking, and eating healthy all involve habit building. Habits naturally make things easier by internalizing and automating the mental energy involved in “doing” things. So instead of gathering the energy and motivation to be productive, you do productive things simply because they are part of your routine - it’s what you do! The same way you may drink a cup of coffee every morning or brush your teeth every night (maybe) without thinking twice about it, you can create habits that make working out or studying or learning any new skill easy to stick to.

In a similar vein, skills like time management and organization make success more likely. Knowing how to stick to a schedule, how to manage your workspace and personal space, and other “productivity enhancers” will significantly ease the burden of accomplishing your goals. 

But if you chose to read this map, you probably already knew all these things. We’re constantly told the importance of habits and society obsesses over the habits of rich and famous people. In this map, I’ll try to help you with the hard part of habits - how to build them. I’ll also discuss other strategies for staying productive and some researched methods for how to improve your ability to learn. If you want to learn helpful methods for sticking to new goals or advice for turning desires into consistent action, then read on; this is the map for you.