[AKN #67] Here's Your Productivity Hack: Write shit down
LAUGH: John Mulaney on Canceling Plans, LOVE: The unbelievable death of a 1950s comedian
Sup homies?
It’s performance review season.
Let me be the first to inform you that you did SO great this year, but you JUST missed getting a 5 out of 5.
As you know, here at Every Fucking Company Ever (EFCE), we have a HIGH bar for performance and definitely don’t give everyone the exact same rating.
So you should be THRILLED with a 4.
You mean a lot to us and we are absolutely not using the highest rating as a mythical carrot that we forever dangle in front of our top performers so they convince themselves to work even harder next year.
We wouldn’t do that because it would be against the values here at EFCE.
On to the newsletter!
LIVE: Here's Your Productivity Hack: Write shit down
When I started at my last company, I was inundated by the work load.
It felt like when I wasn’t DOING analysis, I was PRESENTING analysis.
It was never ending.
I had no clue how anyone kept up without devoting their entire life to the job.
After months of pulling 12 hour days to keep up, I asked a cross functional manager how he seemed to keep up with it all so effortlessly.
He responded quickly and decisively: "keep notes in a presentation ready fashion.”
I did not know it right then, but that would be the highest yield piece of advice I had ever taken at work.
This one sentence saved me HUNDREDS of work hours and made me look like a work rockstar.
How did it save me that much time?
I no longer saw my work as two tasks (step 1: figure it out, step 2: create a presentation to communicate my findings).
I now see it as a single task (create a presentation communicating my findings).
Additionally, when you are laser focused on “how am I going to tell this story to someone?” it cuts away so much superfluous work.
In all, this cut the amount of time I spent on a task in half.
How did it make me look like a rockstar?
Nothing makes you look like you have your shit together quite like someone saying “have we thought about this?” and you saying “Yes” and pulling out the corresponding PowerPoint slide that answers the EXACT question they asked.
This idea works so well because it starts at the end.
At some point in time, you are going to need to tell people about the work you are doing so you should always keep your work in a form where it can be shared with others.
But this idea extends beyond the office because — very often — you need to share what you are working on with future you.
In fact, if you get good at documenting what you do, you can save many hours of time in both life and hobbies.
Here are two tangible non-work related examples:
Documenting healthy recipes
The hardest part about eating healthy is answering the question: “What am I going to eat today?”
If I know exactly what I am going to eat, I can make sure all of the groceries are there to cook it or I can just order it to be delivered.
But if I don’t know what I am going to eat then I will find myself spending time thinking “oh I wonder what I should get today.”
To solve this, I have a process:
Every Sunday, my fiancé and I write out the planned meals for the week from a list of recipes which we like to eat and hit our health goals.
Then we order the groceries to be delivered and never think about what to eat each day the rest of the week.
This saves Wednesday Kevin and Thursday Kevin hours of time because he doesn’t need to think about what he is going to eat at all. Lucky guy.
Newsletter LIVE section topic generation
The hardest part about generating a newsletter week over week is answering the question: “What am I going to say today?”
If I have a topic in mind, I will get the whole article written in short order.
But if I don’t, I might squander an hour and a half of writing time aimlessly trolling Twitter looking for some controversial topic to discuss.
So I came up with a process:
During my morning routine, I will perform the following three items:
15 min Stream of Consciousness journaling
15 min journaling from a prompt
15 min reviewing the two entries and capturing the essence of what I wrote into a "Potential topics" note
This process leaves me with a list of topics to choose from.
So when I sit down to do formal article writing I just grab one and go.
I know this whole process might sound silly and straight forward, but I find this concept to be so powerful.
We really underestimate how many repeatable processes exist in our life.
Write shit down and you will save WAY more time than you think you will.
LAUGH: John Mulaney on Canceling Plans
Something about John Mulaney is so likable and his delivery is really unmatched.
His description of how good it feels to cancel plans is spot on and his ending joke about a table sharing a plate of fries made me crack up.
Though tbh his whole “bozo cheating on his wife” bit is kind of funny given the context of John’s recent life events…
LOVE: The unbelievable death of Dick Shawn
In 1987, a comedian named Dick Shawn died on stage whilst playing dead for part of his act.
Shawn performed for a few minutes before he entered a part of his routine where he began talking about the end of the world.
He ended that bit by laying down on the stage, remaining motionless, while members of the audience looked on, first amused, then appalled.
Witnesses said Shawn, 57, was left lying on the stage for nearly five minutes before the audience realized it was not part of his act, and an ambulance was called.
This description from a member of the crowd is absurd.
“He literally was probably on the stage five minutes until it was realized that it was serious,” said Tom Wartelle of San Diego, a member of the audience of about 500. “The stagehand came out several times and obviously thought it was part of the act.
“It all blended in very well,” Wartelle added. “There were comments from the audience like, ‘Take his wallet!’ Finally a doctor came from back of the wings, felt for his pulse and realized something had happened. He flipped him over. The audience reaction by then was, ‘Boy, this is out of taste.’ ”
Hard to believe there is a better way to go out honestly.
Closing time
You don’t have to go home, but you can subscribe here:
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed are strictly my own. Who else’s would they be?
Mahalo,
Kevin