Work smarter with these 3 laws of productivity
Apply Parkinson's law, the Pareto principle and Newton's first law of motion to your own advantage! And other Monday Morning thoughts such as an article on the 'pandemic of pessimism'.
Shoutout to Parkinson, Pareto and Newton!
⚖ The 3 laws of productivity
⏳ Parkinson's Law
Work expands to fill the time that we allocate to it.
I’m sure we all have had that feeling when a deadline is coming closer, you suddenly are able to move mountains. When time is limited, you are able to work faster and more efficiently. It works in both ways: the less time we have, the faster we work and the more time we have, the more we procrastinate.
How can we use Parkinson’s Law to our advantage? By adding an artificial deadline to our long-term goals, we can trick our brains. Moreover, by reducing the time, we will have to work more efficiently. We will have to prioritize.
Try it out
What are your long-term goals? By when do you want to complete them?
How would you do it differently if you had only half the time?
Now imagine your deadline suddenly changed to 24 hours from now. What’s the best way to get the most out of it? What would you pick? What would you do?
Your brain might realize this is an artificial deadline. One way to deal with that is by putting a penalty on it for not completing it. You could do that literally by putting a bet on it for f.e. 50 euros with a friend. Alternatively, you could put it out there already by sending a meeting invite to your colleagues to go over the presentation that you still have to finish or by asking on your social media who wants to proofread the first chapter of your book tonight which you haven’t even started yet.
🚀 Pareto Principle
80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes
The Pareto Principle can be applied to almost everything in life. In terms of productivity, we interpret the 80/20 rule as 80% of your result stems from just 20% of your efforts.
The key is to find that 20% of the input you need to get 80% of your output. Once you figured that out, put your full devotion to this minority of your tasks. Of course, we can not fall into the perfectionist’s trap here and have to be happy with that 80%
Think about it
What I’m spending 20% of my time on and is giving me 80% of my results?
And what 80% of the work that I do, only drives about 20% of my output?
🌟 Newton's First Law of Motion
An object is at rest or a state of constant motion unless it is acted upon by an external imbalanced force.
According to Newton’s first law of motion when we are at rest, we need an external force to start moving. But once we started our motion, we keep moving. Once you get started it is so much easier to just keep going.
The difficult part is to get started. There are some techniques to give you a kickstart
The 2-minute Rule: If a task is going to take less than 2 minutes of your time then do it right now. If it’s longer: write it down on your to-do list. (This rule became known by the bestseller productivity book Getting Thins Done by David Allen)
The 5-minute Rule: If you are procrastinating a certain task or just struggling to get started, then convince yourself to do it just for 5 minutes. f.e. I should go for a run, but it’s cold. Okay, I’m just going for 5 min. to have at least some movement. You get it. Most of the time you will just continue!
The Preparation Rule: If you have to do something, prepare the gear for it. This can be putting ready your running shoes, cleaning products or pen & paper. By preparing for the task and bringing the gear in front of you, you will start much easier. This is what James Clear calls a keystone habit in his book Atomic Habits.
Don’t think about it! Do it!
😍 My Favorite Things of last week
📷 Photographer Anastasiya Dobrovolskaya with this beautiful picture. Love the color scheme and natural elements!
📰 The ‘fight the pandemic of pessimism’ article of Jeroen De Wit, founder of Teamleader. It’s a Dutch article about the difference between the can-do mentality during the covid pandemic and the pessimism now during the recession. The negativity of people and companies is spreading like a virus at the moment. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Instead, we should focus on entrepreneurship and optimism
📱 AI Lensa app and ChatGPT: Lots of people tried out the Lensa app last week (I plead guilty) to let the AI algorithm create avatars based on your selfies. The other trending AI application is the ChatGPT bot from OpenAI. It transforms a typed question into a full text such as a small blog post or a pitch for a company. The results were actually really good. I saw also many comments that these app and others are stealing the job of artists, copywriters etc. It’s clear. AI is here. The challenge for many people and jobs in the future will be to stay relevant
🗨 Quote of the week
Jobs fill your pocket, adventures fill your soul.
✏Visual of the week
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