Productivity Systems Series: Introducing The Productivity Tripod
It’s the start of the year, so I’ve decided it’s a good time to interrogate and share my overarching productivity philosophy and the systems that sit beneath it.
Over the next 6 weeks I’ll be going deep into each part of my productivity system with a constant emphasis on the philosophy as a whole. As I share each part of the system – and how each part interacts with the other - the philosophy will become clearer.
Philosophy, Goals & Systems
My philosophy is simple – the most productive work happens in the space where your systems and execution are aligned with your goals, values, energy and a constant course-correction. This is where you build rhythm and find flow, and ultimately where you produce your best work.
And while a lot of what I’ve written about on this platform goes deep into the in-the-weeds practices and systems of work – the doing - these granular level hacks loose practicality and substance when misaligned with our goals, values and other meaningful facets of our lives away from the daily grind.
The systems are ultimately a mechanism for nearing your goals while maintaining a healthy interplay between the major life buckets of work, play, experiences of novelty, family, rejuvenation, etc.
I’ll caveat that by emphasising I’m a big believer in focussing on systems at the day-to-day level, but I do believe it’s in our nature to need to know our actions are leading up to something bigger, even if we’re not completely clear on what that final picture will be.
Crafting an enjoyable journey is important, but you’ve got to have confidence you’re broadly doing the right thing at the right time. You’ve got to know why and how the work you’re doing on any given day slots into the jigsaw of your vision.
The Productivity Tripod
My productivity philosophy can be summarised in 3 parts that form The Productivity Tripod. Each leg relies on the other for the philosophy to stand up.
- Clarify & Align
- Systemize and Execute
- Review & Course Correct
Clarify & align is the starting point. It’s where you define your desired outcomes. It’s where you align your goals with your values. This is the place where you choose your direction of travel and where you will constantly refer as you later course-correct and tweak your systems. This is the place above the weeds. Planning. Goal setting. Etc.
Part 2 is to build simple and easy to use systems to execute your work. This is the place where your work unfolds. It’s the place - as David Allen puts it – where you know what to do on any given Tuesday morning at 10am (Tuesday must be the suitably boring day where most speak of a lack of motivation). It’s the place where despite all of life’s noise, distraction and pseudo emergencies, you’ll be executing work with a calm quiet clarity and energy.
These systems should allow for rest, recovery and rejuvenation so you maintain a level of vitality. I strongly subscribe to the idea that positive health is characterised by more than the absence of sickness. Positive health is more – it’s vitality.
Constant review and course-correction sit on the third leg of the tripod. This is where you frequently check-in on your direction of travel.
Goal setting gets most the spotlight when it comes to achievement. But the space where we set goals isn’t the space where we live our lives. Our lives are experienced within imperfect circumstances where we often find ourselves overwhelmed or thrown off track. Constant review and course-correction is the antidote.
Rhythm, Alignment, Less Stress
These 3 principles are always at work. They’re always interacting with each other. Each part falls down without the other. But together they form a solid base for getting work done to a sustainable rhythm and tempo.
The Productivity Tripod is focussed on maintaining alignment, rhythm and navigating work with less stress. It’s not about doing more – it’s about having clarity on the meaningful and important. It’s about doing your work with a calm clarity and stillness of mind knowing the task you’ve chosen at any given time is the right one. It’s about having as much conviction in what you choose to work on, as much as what you choose to eliminate, ignore or defer.
This philosophy is based on the belief - contrary to what we’ve become accustomed to - that work doesn’t have to be frantic or synonymous with stress.
On Anti-productivity
For most of us - whether we work for ourselves or within an organisation - the reality is that there’ll always be work to get through. There’ll always be things thrown at us that we’ll need to filter through a trusted sieve into manageable workflows and quantities.
Without trusted systems and an overarching philosophy to navigate the world of work it’s easy for things to boil over, leaving us burnt out and overwhelmed. The Productivity Tripod is the moat that protects you from the more-is-better and urgency culture.
It’s not about doing more – it’s about a trust in your workflows so you navigate the world of work with less stress.
Footnotes:
1. The absence of disease is not health - Shawn Achor. I first read this in Shawn’s book The Happiness Advantage . It sounds obvious but it’s amazing how often we simply think that if a person is not ill, then then are healthy. The same applies for energy – just because we aren’t ill or tired, it doesn’t mean we have the vitality we could have.
2. Some of the ideas above have been inspired by Cal Newport’s Productivity Funnel. While Cal addresses the in-the-weeds process of task-selection through to execution, I’ve attempted to construct a more holistic philosophy for linking goal-setting and workflows while maintaining rhythm and life-balance.
