My Framework for 10x Productivity

Staying productive is challenging when we are missing the purpose. But everyone gets a bit lost once in a while. Here’s my approach to seamless work ethics and delivery.

One of the questions I most frequently receive from people who’ve just met me and have been observing me for a while is:

How come you handle so much?

Firstly: I handle as much as I handle. To determine whether that’s a lot or a little, one would need to know everything I’m doing at a given moment, and only I know that. Therefore, we should reconcile with the fact that it’s purely subjective perceptions of other people and only we know how much we actually deliver.

However, the key is not how much we deliver, but how we feel about it. While everyone claims that I deliver for 10 people, I myself may be unhappy, feeling that I’m doing too little.

As long as we’re okay with what we’re accomplishing, everything is fine. The problem is that few people are okay with it. At least I am: even though everyone claims that I do a lot, I still demand more from myself. This affects many things I do outside of work. Sometimes I catch myself multitasking and trying to solve a work problem while playing with my kids. I know it’s wrong. But it’s part of who I am. I can work on it, but I can’t and don’t want to deny that it’s part of me. What I’m getting at is that being in harmony with ourselves should be our constant endeavor and it’s what matters most, and along the way we need to accept that not everything always goes perfectly.

This acceptance must come from us and not from others, because only you know exactly what’s going on in your head and whether the tasks you’re carrying out align with your goals. This is also good evidence that we should abandon all that others think about this topic, because they never have a complete view of our goals, methods, and degree of their realization.

You could say it’s a kind of harmony of goals. I usually find out how important it is to respect it when I fail to achieve it. For example, going on vacation when I have unfinished business makes me feel simply bad about myself and I can’t relax. As a result, I come back even more tired than I was, just to finally finish what I previously failed to do. Understanding this phenomenon has allowed me to plan my free time much better and accept that to rest, you have to prepare with proper, conscious action.

I used to think that I could find peace by resolving all the accumulated issues. However, the number of issues is infinite. The only way is to find inner peace by rejecting the concept that all external matters must be resolved.

How to define goals

Realizing that the struggle with goal achievement and the associated feelings occur internally and should be detached from the opinions of others is only half the battle. Equally important is defining goals in such a way that they come from us, not from how we want others to perceive us. This may be obvious to you, but it wasn’t to me. A good example of this is the fact that I completed law studies because the external message suggested that it was a good idea. Maybe if I had known earlier about how to properly select goals in line with my values, I could have saved a lot of time.

The lack of proper goal selection results in a pattern that I’ve repeated for years. It involves getting caught up in a whirlwind of work to achieve something. Then I feel burned out, take a moment to recover, and throw myself into the next whirlwind. Despite everything, with the right dose of motivation and self-discipline, I can move mountains. However, this method turns out to be suboptimal in the context of my health and overall well-being, as well as relationships with loved ones. Over the years, I found it very difficult to enjoy successes or even recognize them. Something that others perceived as a great result, for me at best provided temporary relief that I finally managed to achieve it and could move on to the next thing that had been on my mind for a long time.

I haven’t found a perfect cure for this problem and we have to accept that sometimes it’s just like that. In this light, the perspective of work-life balance is not attractive to me at all. I often managed to work almost non-stop for 2 weeks to achieve one important goal and I (and my environment) learned to feel good about it. It’s important to me to be able to appreciate what I’ve done at the end, not just jump to the next task. From personal experience, I also understood that despite everything, rest during the process is beneficial, which I will write about below.

Authenticity

I also realized that this state of affairs can be significantly improved by choosing goals that are authentic, and then methods of their execution that allow me to enjoy the process itself, not just the result.

What are these authentic goals? They come from asking a few important questions:

• What exactly does success mean to me?
• What do I value in life — what are my values?
• How do I want to feel every day — what gives me satisfaction?

These may seem lofty and existential questions. However, having such a moral code allows me to manage goals and time more effectively and plan what is truly important to me. The answers to these questions helped me understand what is AUTHENTIC for me.

Contrary to appearances, it is not obvious.

There are things that others may judge negatively (e.g., divorce), while in a person’s life it may be the best thing that could happen (e.g., breaking free from a toxic relationship). It took me a long time to understand that certain social norms, even guidelines from our loved ones and parents (e.g., the best course of study) are wrong, as are the harmful values they uphold (e.g., the work ethic as a value in itself, that nothing in life comes easily, that failures always result from mistakes made). I was a person who was constantly busy for years. This constant busyness is like a badge we pin on ourselves and wear proudly, the alternative cost of which is our health — physical and mental, and relationships.

A good test of whether I should really set a particular goal is to ask myself: would I do it if I couldn’t tell anyone about it?

At some point in my life, I simply understood that I should pursue goals that are authentic to me and completely stop worrying about the opinion of others, their criticism of my failures as well as praising my successes. This may not have helped me deliver better, but deliver what actually matters.

Let’s get back to these important questions — based on my answers, you might better understand what I mean.

What does success mean to me exactly?

As much as me and my close family are happy.

Just that. Underneath it hides a lot of things, such as that I am healthy, safe, fulfilled. Underneath feeling safe hides financial security, so maybe the goal will also be the results of my projects. As you can see, digging deeper it’s easy to extract individual goals from such a general statement and then prioritize them over time. It’s possible that once I’m financially free permanently, I’ll be able to cross out the goal of feeling safe. And that’s the point.

However, even such a broadly defined definition of success does a good job for a simple reason: every goal I set in the short term can be checked by reverse engineering with the question: “will delivering it bring me and my loved ones closer to happiness?”

The answer is not always obvious, but getting to it allows me to understand why I do what I do. And this in turn has a huge impact on motivation.

What do I value in life — what are my values?

There are many, but let’s take the most important one: freedom.

To narrow it down to the current context: it’s very easy to filter assumed goals through the prism of whether they meet my definition of freedom, or rather whether the realization of such a goal will be in line with my values.

Some time ago I went to San Francisco to pitch one of my projects. Then I had several meetings with investors and potentially secured high funding. However, the requirement was to move to California. This might be the pinnacle of many entrepreneurs’ dreams. However, for me, it disrupted the foundation of my values: the sense of freedom, and for this reason, I rejected the offer.

If I know that a given goal will bring me closer to my understanding of success, and is also in line with my values, I have even more rational, internal reasons why I should achieve it, especially when I encounter adversity.

How do I want to feel every day — what gives me satisfaction?

I want to be in a state of flow as often as possible.

This is the state in which Leo Messi is during a free kick. He probably doesn’t hear the audience then and thinks about nothing else but scoring a goal. He identifies with the goal to such an extent that he becomes one with it. This state causes us to ignore the passage of time, and the accompanying dopamine makes us feel satisfied being in the process itself, not just after its completion.

Once research was done on a group of IT managers, which showed that their average attention span was 3 minutes. I had exactly the same. The number of distractors determined that at the end of the day when asked what I did today, I couldn’t answer (and I felt tired). The average energy cost of switching context is 20 minutes, even if you just look at a notification. The moment I blocked myself 1.5 hours for work without distractors, I started to enter the state of focus and deliver results much easier.

I love flow. Not only related to work, but also play, sports and generally spending free time in an interesting way. That’s why I want to stay in this state as long as possible. Well-set goals, but also a conscious and planned way of achieving them, make it easy to find yourself in it.

Additionally, to bring truly unique value to the world, you need an obsession, which can sometimes be identified with the state of flow. Delivering at the highest level requires flow.

You could say that being in a state of flow is a significant hint as to whether I have skillfully set a goal for myself that is authentic.

At this point, I need to make one important caveat. I mentioned overarching goals and values like happiness and freedom. Striving for something is a contract I make with myself. This means that I agree to sometimes be unhappy along the way, but achieving the goal will give me satisfaction and in the long term will bring me closer to my definition of success. The same applies to values such as freedom. If building a project would require me to make several trips to California, I am willing to accept such a trade-off. However, if taking funding would mean having to cooperate with investors in making decisions and permanently moving to San Francisco, this is a significant violation of this value.

The realization of every assumption involves the fact that we will have to temporarily sacrifice some of our values for the greater good. But even more often, we will have to do things along the way that we don’t particularly like and this is completely normal. Key for me was understanding the following relationship:

How much time during the day I spend doing things I have to do, versus those that actually interest me.

From the perspective of delivery, this seems key to me for a simple reason. I once heard of a theory in which motivation is a depleted resource and for me such reasoning just works. If we set a goal that is very distant, there is a high risk that just thinking about its realization will not provide us with enough motivation on a daily basis to overcome boring tasks.

Journey versus goal

Let’s assume that reaching the goal requires performing 1000 tasks. Each task that interests us adds 5 points of motivation, and each one that we simply have to do takes away 5 points of motivation. Awareness of the goal itself gives us a starting credit of 100 points of motivation. We have to take care of the rest along the way. If we only perform tasks that we have to force ourselves to do, the credit will quickly run out. There are goals that give us more motivation in themselves: for example, “I have to earn money for an apartment rental to move out of my parents’ house” had an infinite credit of motivation points for me, considering the jobs I was undertaking at the time. But this balance always exists and it is crucial to be able to consciously evaluate it.

The fewer existential, critical needs we have, the more important it becomes to set goals, the pursuit of which will be conditioned by a series of activities that interest us and add points of motivation.

I came to the conclusion that over time the journey becomes much more important than the goal. It took me years to reach this conclusion. Which doesn’t mean that I wasn’t aware of it earlier. On the contrary. I heard it from everyone who achieved something and read it in every major book in my life. However, it turns out that this is one of those things in the category of “easy for you to say” and you just have to come to it yourself. Partly by doing those harder tasks to achieve critical, existential goals.

What I unfortunately understood too late is the fact that until a certain time, my primary goal (success) in life was to find the people who need me the most and projects in which I have the biggest advantages. This is about things that performing for others is work, and for me — pleasure (most of the time). Building goals based on what others are doing and striving for is a mistake. Also for this reason, all universal guides or success stories don’t matter much.

This also means that you have to often return to the key questions and redefine them. The beginning of the year is a good occasion for this. It may turn out that our values have changed, which is completely normal, but without revision, we can fall into the trap of feeling that something is wrong. A good example is material goals, which often evolve over time. For example, buying a Lambo may seem like a great goal, but most people, with age, simply come to the conclusion that it is not in line with their values.

Habits Instead of Goals

I’ve also outlined the problem of perspective. Whether I feel satisfaction comes from performing current tasks, not from the fact that I’ve moved a hundredth of a percent closer to, most often distant, goal.

That’s why, instead of focusing on goals, I prefer to create habits that will bring me closer to them.

Among top athletes, a characteristic that they all share was studied — the so-called hyperfocus. It’s about the fact that the best ones focus on one important thing, eliminating all distractions. But it’s not about winning an Olympic medal in 2 years but rather running the nearest 200 meters in training. It’s about focusing fully on the nearest thing that will bring us closer to a distant goal.

Why habits are important, I understood reading this quote:

At the end of the day, you are a combination of your habits and the people who you spend the most time with.

In some studies, I read that if I really don’t want to do something, I should try to focus for a few seconds on some distant object and then switch to action. I don’t know why, but it works. Currently in such situations, I choose one of two things: sport, because usually it’s enough to make a decision, put on shoes and you can go for a run (when I come back, I have a lot of energy and time spent on running or walking is never wasted) or this technique, to narrow the focus, release a bit of dopamine and overcome the crisis.

If I have a larger personal goal, for example related to health, I always try to turn it into a habit. After some time, I evaluate whether a given habit effectively brings me closer to the goal, and if not, I calibrate it. However, I never judge myself. I also don’t expect to always be able to implement a given habit. I believe that this is not effective and only leads to feelings of guilt. I treat habits like projects, the implementation of which I planned — if I don’t get the right result from them, I try to pivot them.

Habits have one magical feature — once ingrained in our system, they are incredibly effective. Building them has been helped by the book Atomic Habits, as well as Andrew Huberman’s podcast. Effective habit building requires persistence, but the results are spectacular. Currently, as soon as the thought “I don’t feel like it” appears in my head, the next thought jumps in automatically: sport, or narrow focus. This is because I managed to develop such a habit. I also discovered that if you systematically work on instilling the right habits, shaping the next ones is much easier. We kind of create a habit of shaping new habits (or getting rid of harmful ones).

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Trust as a Foundation

However, what books and podcasts didn’t tell me is the fact that building habits starts with building trust in yourself.

I always thought of myself as not particularly clever, but hardworking. This perception of reality is good for me because it allows me to rely on something I have influence over and it’s worth approaching tasks in this way. Usually, when I managed to do something, I always subconsciously credited all the merit to myself. If something didn’t go well, I tried to find a million reasons beyond my control that led to it. Even if these are just excuses we want to use to convince others of our worth, I noticed that to deceive someone else, we always have to deceive ourselves first. Shifting thinking from factors beyond our control (“I’m too stupid for this”) to what we can influence (“I’ll start with what I can do”) was crucial for me in achieving long-term goals.

Ergo, it is also important in the context of habits — every time we carry out a task we have committed to, we gain trust points, i.e. self-confidence. Over time, such a built foundation is increasingly difficult to crumble and gives a stronger effect than the biggest streak in Duolingo.

When I started trusting myself and stopped being disappointed, I started delivering better.

Building Habits

However, even with such a foundation, habit formation is difficult and very individual. Dr. Huberman mentioned a study in which habit formation of a walk after lunch took different people from 18 to 244 days. How to measure if we have already formed a habit? Primarily by how much it depends on context and environment. Even if you’re on vacation, you probably can’t imagine not brushing your teeth. People who have, for example, a running habit, feel the same way about this activity, regardless of the place and time they are in. It is scientifically proven (among others in Psychology of Habit), that with each repetition of a given activity, certain sequences are created that reduce the so-called limbic friction, i.e. in simplification, the resistance of the nervous system to performing a given activity, modifying the structure of the brain — the hippocampus. Being aware of this has allowed me to overcome the slightly harder moments of habit formation many times, where I could tell myself that if I do something now, next time it will be “a little easier”.

Shortcut notes from the podcast that accompany my habit building are:

• I choose a maximum of 6 new habits
• I try to carry out at least 4 every day
• The time to perform the task is irrelevant, the state in which our body and mind are is important, I don’t use any schedule

For this reason, it is better to operate on phases of the day:

• 0–8 hours after waking up — active state, during this time it is worth placing the most difficult habits, because the chemistry of our body helps to overcome limbic friction. It’s worth taking care of light exposure after waking up and activity.
• 9–15 hours after waking up — more serotonin supports a state of relaxation, we should rather prepare our body for the process of consolidating learning habits, which takes place at night, you can place habits with less friction here. Reduce the amount of light in the room, take a warm bath.
• 16–24 hours after waking up — a darkened room and low room temperature facilitate the important process of so-called reinforced learning, extremely important in consolidating habits, which reduces friction the next day. If you want to develop a meditation habit, try before sleep.

I practice habits for 21 days

• I don’t feel guilty if it doesn’t work out one day, I don’t compensate for habits the next day
• After 21 days I observe how many habits work automatically (usually 1–2)
• I start the next cycle leaving habits that require work and adding new ones

I want to emphasize something that results from these points but in my opinion is crucial for effective delivery, and completely non-obvious: rest is part of the process. This was counterintuitive for me for years. After all, if I sit non-stop for 3 weeks on a given task, I will deliver faster. Apparently yes, but in practice it will have more negative effects than benefits. Probably, in the next period I will achieve much less, or slower. Rest is crucial not only for consolidating neural connections in order to shape habits. Contrary to appearances, our body also works on solving the current problem when we rest. I became more aware of this by reading The Creative Act: A Way of Being, which I recommend if you want to approach your work in a more metaphysical way.

Maintaining Habits

In a perfect world, if we manage to actually form a habit, there’s no need to maintain it because it happens automatically. However, there are often situations where, for example, illness knocks us out for a while, or there is another reason why we can’t perform a given task. The most important thing is to have a pre-thought-out plan for such situations. The fact that we won’t be able to deliver once in a while is 100% certain. It’s up to us, however, whether this will knock us out of rhythm for longer or maybe even forever. To counteract this, it’s enough to accept the fact that we don’t always have to deliver for more important habits and practice emergency scenarios. If we assume beforehand that we can let go in situation a) b) c), our body will simply treat it as fulfilling a condition, not as a failure from which a rule can be made.

The ability to let go is also very important. Most often in difficult situations, when I couldn’t achieve something, it was natural for me to push until I got something done. I pulled countless all-nighters because of this. However, over time I understood that in such situations a better strategy is to let go for a while. Often the next day I already had an idea of how to solve the problem. When we rest, our body works on its own on what’s bothering us. Not without reason mom always repeated that “morning will be wiser”.

Sometimes it’s worth giving up striving for a certain result altogether, because during the process it turned out that the goal is not right. I used to have a big problem with this. This is another reason why setting, especially distant and large goals, is not entirely correct. When I still did this, I was generally emotionally and time invested in delivering the goal, so I tried to achieve it at all costs, despite the fact that all objective circumstances indicated that it was pointless. After a longer time, I found a simple remedy for this. First: I always test bigger ideas. I create small MVPs, or talk to customers before releasing a new feature, how and in what way they plan to use it. I know that I know nothing and only think so. This intuition often proves to be correct, but despite everything, before committing large resources, I always try to perform small tests, which confirm my belief that a given decision is good and it’s worth investing resources to achieve a given assumption. Secondly, I learned to mentally let go. This was even harder and in short it meant that I changed my approach to the implementation of each task — my main goal is simply to learn. The fact that something won’t work out for me or I have to redefine the goal in this light is not a failure, but a lesson from which I can draw conclusions. I always try to describe such a process and encourage my team to do so as part of the post mortem process. In this way, valuable conclusions can be drawn from every situation.

Breaking Bad Habits

When acquiring habits, it’s beneficial to ignore the fact that we failed to realize it one day. However, there are exceptions to this rule, and these are resolutions based on prohibitions. It was always beneficial for me to think of willpower as a muscle that I train:

Today is hard for me, but tomorrow will be easier because the muscle will work better

Indeed, that’s how it works in practice.

When I said goodbye to sweets, caffeine, or alcohol in my life for good, I didn’t so much give myself permission “once in a while”, on the contrary, I thought of myself as a person addicted, for whom one piece of chocolate is enough to return to addiction. In my case, it was like that and once I let go, I allowed myself to let go again. So if we want to part with something categorically (even for a while), this technique was effective for me. I was inspired to it by Jerzy Gregorek in the book The Happy Body: The Simple Science of Nutrition, Exercise, and Relaxation, which I definitely recommend.

For exceptionally difficult cases of habits, I also recommend transferring, for example, 500 PLN to charitable purposes for each “side jump”. You’ll be surprised how well it works. Personally, it also helped me to understand why a given substance, e.g. sugar, leads directly to diseases and alcohol to bad mood — not on the principle of “because it is” but step by step, how our body functions with it. Perplexity is great for this, which can be thoroughly asked about such causal relationships.

Just Do It

On my way to effective work or achieving goals, this quote also played a big role:

Stop asking why and start saying wow

I noticed that in my case, focusing on this narrow goal actually solves most of the problems associated with procrastination, even the hidden one. An example of hidden procrastination is planning a meeting to discuss a given problem. If it’s important enough, let’s discuss it here and now. The same applies to meetings without an agenda. I always know what I’m aiming for. This greatly facilitates the decision-making process. At the stage of minor interactions, it’s equally important. For example, I’m starting a conversation right away. I always strive for reflection at the beginning, what the parties want to get from such a conversation, and then I filter all my statements based on that. Does what I say actually serve to achieve a specific result, or is it just an attempt to prove that I’m right or to present my views?

Every time we say “I intend to do this” we actually postpone it in time and signal that we don’t have the right priority for it. Instead, we should just do it. This also results from the fact that we subconsciously believe that some things are more important than others. The goal is something we need to plan, write down, discuss, commit to. But cleaning Puszka’s litter box needs to be done now, because the air in the room reminds us of it with every breath. In practice, whatever currently occupies our mind is the most important, regardless of what it is. When I realized this, I started consciously directing thoughts towards things that bring me closer to achieving an important goal. And so — meditation helps a lot in this. It helps to steer them on the right track when suddenly priority gives way to a minor issue.

Or Maybe I’ll Help Myself a Bit…

At this stage, you understand why I don’t believe in goals and why I consider their planning as procrastination. I definitely prefer specific tasks or building habits, which successfully replace goal planning. Much more important to me is the motivation that brings us closer to achieving them. I consider the skillful adaptation of our environment to facilitate pushing things forward as a great art in this area.

I once read an interview with Dan Bilzerian (a colorful character, if you don’t know him, check him out). I remember how systematically Dan approached increasing his “luck” with girls. He simply invited significantly fewer men than women to parties, which naturally increased his chances. Although I haven’t read his book, I think he called it “The Setup” for this reason. Even though our goals are undoubtedly different, the way of thinking about them seems to be very similar. I heard from a friend that Dan is very effective in the areas that interest him.

In the context of habits, this is equally effective. Both Dr. Huberman’s concept of bracketing and James Clear defining triggers for habitual behaviors suggest that it’s a good idea to shape your environment to minimize friction before performing a task. That’s why I always have a book on the shelf next to the bed, and my workstation is constructed so that everything is ready to record. One button launches the camera, lights, microphone. In this way, I significantly reduce the number of activities, which brings me closer to achieving the goal. Sometimes, even without knowing what I will be recording, I press the button and it turns out that after a few minutes I already know and start delivering.

How it works in a team

Until a certain point, I thought that my striving for the intended result was a certain character trait and it’s hard to revive it in someone who simply doesn’t have it. People from my environment tried to convince me of this. Today I know that this is wrong thinking and sometimes an excuse, allowing to justify the lack of results, which for example we expect from people we work with. You’ve probably heard the statement:

You can’t expect others to work like you do. After all, it’s your company, not theirs.

From a time perspective, I consider it a false justification for poor communication or management skills, or simply lack of professional approach on the other side. But thanks to what I described above, I was able to better understand why this is the case. We simply didn’t think to consider how such a person answered key questions and consequently, how to make their and our goals align. When you give someone money for work by employing them, you lower their status, so you need to help them find greater value in common tasks and goals.

It’s true that if you want quick results, act alone, and if you want long-term ones — play as a team. But there’s no obstacle for a team to work very effectively, almost like a goal-focused individual. However, this is not something that will happen spontaneously and internal, authentic needs have an impact on it.

In practice, the goals for the team are the result of working with clients and analyzing their needs, and the overall, larger vision we have for our project. So there’s no philosophy or difficult decisions in setting them. There’s also no need to deceive ourselves — companies are usually created to make money, and the mission and vision have a chance to materialize when funding is ensured. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Generally, the money we earn is an indicator of the value our clients receive from us (in a healthy model, where flows are not distorted e.g. by VC).

Very often I set the goals to be achieved, i.e. the tasks we have, taking this aspect into account. I try to estimate what value in time a planned function may have for us and present it to the team. This makes it easy to assess what approximate time for its implementation will cause it to strain. Thanks to this, we don’t have to operate on any specific goals (milestones) or deadlines nor waste time on micromanagement. In a team where trust is the foundation, this mode of operation works very well. It may not be optimal for building rockets to Mars, but we don’t have such aspirations. Thanks to this, we only operate on tasks and small habits that facilitate our work (e.g. filling in the changelog in Notion).

How it works for me

I believe there’s no sense in overthinking goals. For example, the workout that works best for me is simply one that I have enough enthusiasm to do every day.

In summary:

• I don’t have defined specific goals (nor do I believe in setting them)
• What I have to do is fairly obvious to me
• I don’t plan several years ahead, a quarter is the maximum predictability
• I don’t impose deadlines and pressures on myself
• I don’t systematize goals, beyond a simple task list
• The list is there to drop something that momentarily comes to mind (to not knock myself out of the current context)
• I have an empty calendar and don’t impose schedules on myself or others
• I always try to understand (not just know) the reason why I do something
• I strive to make the most of the time I have
• I don’t demand anything from others beyond what I demand from myself

Does this mean that I don’t think at all about what will be in a year, two, what’s the bigger vision for what I do? Maybe not at all, but I don’t think about it too much. If I didn’t know where I wanted to go, I wouldn’t start new projects at all. Within each of them, I set a long-term vision and mission, which I always have in mind and modify if necessary. But I don’t think about where I see myself and my projects in 3, 5 years. I’m not saying such goals are bad, for someone who wants to achieve extraordinary results. You could say it’s a consequence of my definition of success, which is not to build a unicorn, but rather to enjoy the journey in accordance with values.

In my teams, it’s very important that everyone has a clear vision of where we want to go and row in the same direction. However, this does not mean that you have to set hundreds of goals for years and then arrange them in roadmaps marked with deadlines. Usually, it’s a very well described upcoming quarter. The main goals set by the mission and vision are helpful in decision-making, but also the key values we follow. A list of such values often allows to confront them with key decisions and make the one that is most consistent with our principles.

The key is that I try to cooperate with people who have values similar to mine. If someone values freedom and independence, they are likely to be committed to delivering on their principles. Understanding your strengths and weaknesses is also useful, for example with the help of the Gallup test. The result is matched individuals who trust each other — both themselves and others. As you know, trust is the foundation for me to achieve goals.

Daily work

My daily work includes 1.5-hour focus blocks when I concentrate on a specific task. In my case, this most increases the chances of achieving a flow state. I try to have at least 3 such blocks a day. Apart from these blocks, I handle all current matters and distractors, which despite everything I have quite a lot of. However, if something starts to occupy my mental space during focus, I use a shortcut that adds a task to the list on Notion in order to offload it from my memory as quickly as possible.

This list, and one main goal that I set for the given week, are the only signposts supporting decisions on which task to throw into the next block. I don’t operate according to any daily schedule, I don’t block slots in my calendar and I hardly use it. My work requires creativity and focus, and unfortunately, this is not something I can generate on demand. Blocks in the calendar imposed on me the need to be focused at a given moment, and it just doesn’t work for me. Tasks in Notion have only two fields: name and deadline, because sometimes it is necessary. The list only shows me tasks for today, overdue tasks and tasks without a deadline.

I try to set current tasks that are neither too hard nor too easy to do. Some research suggests 85% difficulty. The idea is for such a task to be a bigger challenge, to release a dose of dopamine that will motivate me to continue working, but also not to be too difficult so that I have to sit on it for weeks. Usually during the day I tick off a few simpler tasks and one more important one, which pushes the most important resolutions forward, I implement from week to week.

Conclusion

Everything is in our heads. Our body is capable of almost impossible things. If we abandon all the blockades that we impose on ourselves — we will be unstoppable. The foundation is mental and physical health and to ensure it, I try to create healthy habits and eliminate harmful ones (not collect goals). However, this is a very individual matter. Until I knew my advantages and the people who could benefit from my work, it was the most important determinant of success for me. Once I developed the habit of creating habits and understood where my work has the greatest value, goals became an obvious continuation of this thought. Their realization is relatively simple for me, because I mostly try to do things that interest me and I understand why they give value to others, which provides an additional dose of motivation.

That’s all for now. Did you enjoy this article? If so, please join my newsletter to receive such insights weekly! 📬

— Greg