Chris Bailey. The Productivity Project: Accomplishing More by Managing Your Time, Attention, and Energy Better. Random House Canada. New York. 2016.

Bailey's work reinforces and expands on a seminar class from 2009 Einblau Associates (Manage Energy and Get Organized) and Loehr and Schwartz (The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal). Einblau's latest title: Gain Time by Managing Energy. Bailey adds in attention as a third key factor for productivity.

Bailey includes a brief takeaway point and estimated time-to-read at the start of each chapter to help us fit our reading into our schedules. We also find easy-to-apply exercises throughout the book to experiment with what Bailey has discovered. Another worthy reference book we can use to refine and tune our performance.

Ideas valuable for me:

• Accomplishment underlies productivity
  • Accomplishment depends on how you use your attention and energy as well as your time
  • Accomplishment depends on how you replenish your attention and energy
  • Improving your productivity depends on connecting to your values
    • Values drive goals
    • Daily intention drives daily action
    • "Would I regret doing more or less of "this"?
  • Some of the tasks you need to do will lead you to accomplish more than others in the same amount of time
  • Rate your tasks on meaningfulness for you and impact on your work
  • We only get a limited amount of time to budget
  • Rule of 3
    • at the start of each day, visualize your answer at the end of the day to: "When the day is over, what three things will I want to have accomplished?"
    • at the start of each week, check your anticipated answer to similar question for the week
• Manage our attention
  • Understand our own personal "biological prime-time" (highest-energy time block)
    • Reserve biological prime-time for high-impact tasks and protect that time from distractions
    • Procrastination has triggering properties (minimize these)
      • Boring
      • Frustrating
      • Difficult
      • Ambiguous or Unstructured
      • Lacking in personal meaning
      • Lacking in intrinsic rewards (less fun or engaging)
  • Create a procrastination list of tasks (take one from that list to substitute for the task you want to procrastinate)
  • List the costs of putting off the task
  • Remember any task we put off now gives our future self more tasks to do -- get familiar with our future self
    • use an app to see our future face
    • send a letter to our future self
    • create a future memory - visualize a more productive version of ourself
  • Control Internet distraction
  • We must manage our energy and attention at least as well as we manage our time
  • Managing our time becomes important only after we understand how much energy and focus you will have throughout the day and define what you want to accomplish
  • Limit the time you allow for a task to boost how much energy and attention you invest in it
  • Group your maintenance tasks to a single day and allow room for imperfection in these repetitive tasks
  • Set strict limits on time for your support tasks
  • Consider "How much would I be willing to pay in order to buy back one hour of my life?"
  • Practice brain dumps (David Allen, Ready for Anything and Getting Things Done)
  • Use lists to help
    • worry list - items to worry about
    • 'hot spot' list - J.D. Meier
    • projects list, matched to 'hot spots'
    • accomplishments list
  • 'Tilt' our effort to adjust day to day, using key questions (10 question in total)
    • What do we need to schedule or do next week?
    • What are some unresolved issues we are having in each area?
    • What obstacles will get in the way of our goals next week?
    • Are we going in the right direction with all our commitments?
    • Are there any commitments we need to add or remove? Expand or shrink?
    • What did we knock out of the park last week?
  • Example 'hot spots' groups
    • Mind
    • Body
    • Emotions
    • Career
    • Finances
    • Relationships
    • Fun
  • Use our brains in both brain modes for periods throughout the day or week: focus, wandering (daydreaming)
  • Understand our attention
    • Central Executive
    • Focus
    • Awareness
  • Strengthen our attention
    • single-tasking and simple daily meditation
    • filter distractions intentionally
    • distractions cost 25 minutes to recover
  • Do just one thing, and notice when we wander
    • work on tasks using pomodoro technique
    • practise focusing on conference call during call
    • practise listening when you are with others
    • read books
    • eat slowly while only eating
  • Practise pausing to observe your breath at moments throughout the day, exercise 'microintentions' to pause 'autopilot', such as
    • let our phone ring 3 times before answering
    • pause when we finish writing our email before we send
    • be present when walking between rooms
• Manage our Energy
  • Mind our food and water
    • Eat more unprocessed foods
    • Notice when we are full and stop eating
    • Drink enough water each day to feel well
    • Remember that "caffeine borrows energy from later in the day" and "alcohol borrows energy from tomorrow"
  • Sleep enough
    • create a nighttime ritual
    • limit our blue light in the evening
    • use naps
    • keep our sleeping areas neutrally cool, quiet and dark
    • remember caffeine can take 8 to 14 hours to start leaving our bodies
  • Physical activity replenishes our attention and energy -- our focus
• Happiness and productivity are interlinked (9 ways to keep "happy"), such as
  • take more breaks -- such as 15 minutes per hour
  • journal daily about a positive experience we had
  • ask ourselves for advice
• Remember everyone experiences negative self-talk and that it's fiction