Productivity

"People tend to abandon the good system they’ll follow in search of the perfect system that they will quit." ―Tim Ferriss

On distractions:
“Follow the wandering, the distraction, find out why the mind has wandered; pursue it, go into it fully. When the distraction is completely understood, then that particular distraction is gone. When another comes, pursue it also.” Jiddu Krishnamurti
The 70% Rule by Jeff Bezos (2016 Letter to Shareholders):
“Most decisions should probably be made with somewhere around 70% of the information you wish you had. If you wait for 90%, in most cases, you’re probably being slow. Plus, either way, you need to be good at quickly recognizing and correcting bad decisions. If you’re good at course correcting, being wrong may be less costly than you think, whereas being slow is going to be expensive for sure.”
Can't start? Use BJ Fogg's technique: make an action as small as possible, do less than you are capable of doing.
- Use positive constraints like the Pomidoro Technique.
- Build in incentives and consequences: make yourself socially accountable, check in or a bet (we work harder to combat loss aversion).
Too big To Do list? Can't decide where to start? Ask: "Which one of these if done will make the rest irrelevant or easy?"