3 Productivity Life Hacks

It’s no secret, I’m a full-blown nerd when it comes to productivity hacks.

 

Whether it saves me 5 minutes in my morning routine, or modifies how I prioritize a to-do list, I will try just about anything out to see if it works. If it sticks, it becomes an essential habit. 

 

Over the last few years, I’ve tried dozens of little cheat codes I’ve picked up from various sources. There’s been 3 hacks in particular that yielded particularly powerful results. 

 

Good habits to follow don’t have to feel like work, nor do they need to be overly complex. They simply need to deliver desirable outcomes.

 

1. The 1-Minute Rule

I need my workspace to be free of clutter. Since I mostly work from home, this extends to the majority of my apartment. When my living space or kitchen is a mess, I can’t fully focus, and tend to procrastinate with partial cleaning efforts when I should be working on something more important.

 

Most of us tend to let messes accumulate until we eventually make time to clean or organize everything all at once. The more it builds it, the heavier the time burden weighs on our psyche. But it doesn’t have to be this way! How do we shed ourselves of this trivial weight? The 1-Minute Rule.

 

The 1-Minute Rule is as follows: 

If it takes you 60 seconds or less to complete the task, you do it right then and there, no waiting or delaying. 

 

That means when you get back home, you’ll hang up your jacket right away instead of throwing it over the chair. When you take a book from the bookshelf, you’ll put it back when you’re done. The Rule doesn’t only apply to cleaning and organizing. If you can reply to an email in less than a minute, then fire away. If you’ve got some house plants, water those bad boys. The trick is to think of the small stuff and get it off your plate immediately.

 

You’ll be surprised to discover how much this mental cue will de-clutter your life and how much it adds up over time. You’ll have more mental space to take on “the big stuff” when all the little things are in their place. Gretchen Rubin’s post on this concept is incredibly helpful if you want to go deeper with more examples.

 

2. Make Your Bed

This stoic practice was famously written about in the book “Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life…And Maybe the World”. Premised on the domino effect, this short read explores how the small win of making your bed first thing in the morning can trigger a chain reaction of positive momentum, allowing you to tackle bigger and more challenging tasks with less effort. 

 

Like the 1-Minute Rule, this daily discipline sets the day’s tone by sacrificing a morning’s moment to improve your day’s end. Not only does this calcify a victory before your brain is fully functioning, it reinforces itself every night when it’s time to settle into slumber. The ease in which you’ll complete this chore produces a feeling of accomplishment that has a persistent effect on your psychological state.

 

I’ll take this a half-step further by recommending what should be an obvious practice; wash or change your sheets every 2 weeks at a minimum. Clean sheets are one the most simple gifts you can give yourself. According to a survey by U.K. mattress company Ergoflex, the average single man washes his sheets just four times per year. If you’re like me, that factoid made you shudder in disgust too.

 

Make your bed, keep it clean (you filthy animals), and win the day.

 

3. The One Thing

This hack is as much as a mindset as it is a practice, but oh man, can this impact your life. When I heard Gary Keller talk about this on a Tim Ferriss podcast, the fireworks went off. It might seem overly simple, but it’s more challenging than you think, despite its application to just about any aspect of life.  

 

Here’s the prompt, which is appropriately named The Focusing Question:

 

“What is the ONE THING that I could do, such that by doing it, everything else becomes easier or unnecessary?” 

 

Take a second to re-read that statement and reflect on it. This doesn’t translate to “stack-rank your to-do list and attack it one by one” – it’s more nuanced than that. It demands that you filter whatever list you have swimming in your head, boil it down to ONE THING, and to put all of your energy into it without delay. Because the second part of the prompt dictates that by doing ONE thing, everything else should be easier or unnecessary, this completely flips the traditional to-do list on its head. Essentially, we’re looking to make the one decision that removes a thousand decisions. Find the lead domino and use all your might to tip it over.

 

You might be thinking, “this doesn’t apply to me, I juggle multiple projects all the time! I’m a damn good multitasker!” Most of us are not the jugglers we tout ourselves as on LinkedIn. Nor does it serve us to market ourselves this way all the time. The more you let competing priorities change positions on your hierarchy, the more time you waste with split focus.

 

Challenge yourself to sift through the noise and establish your ONE thing. Write it down in your planner, calendar, or whiteboard, and make it a habit to check it off as your reward once complete. Don’t stray from it until it’s done. Remember, everything else should feel easier or unnecessary afterwards, so the payoff is well worth it.

 

So how do we condition ourselves into easily filter what that ONE thing is?

 

In Gary’s book, he reveals how willpower is not on will call. You can’t trick yourself into doing something you don’t want to do day-in and day-out. Think of your willpower like the gas tank in your car. Certain actions will deplete it more than others, like restraining aggressive feelings or constantly trying to please others. 

 

This is why you must leverage your willpower with a full tank and prioritize the ONE thing from the get-go. When willpower runs out, we default to our factory settings, which are most often our bad habits, like procrastinating, skipping exercise, or reaching for an unhealthy snack. To fill your tank, you must prime your brain into a ready state.

 

What are some examples of brain-priming exercises, you might ask? Here are some that seem to work for me, whether it’s doing just one or a combination of a few each day:

• Stepping outside immediately after waking up and facing the sun to get some Vitamin D percolating in your system
• Enjoying a light breakfast (oatmeal/yogurt, fruit, coffee) without looking at your phone
• Stretching for 10-15 minutes (preferably on a mat)
• Walking around the block for 10-15 minutes
• Finishing your shower with 60-90 seconds of ice cold water
• Riding the stationary bike for 15-20 minutes (HIIT is preferable for maximum benefit)
• Wim Hof Method if you’re into breathing techniques

You don’t need to go to the gym at 5am in order to “crush the day” like many productivity experts might recommend. You simply need to kickstart your caloric activity enough to get the pistons of your brain-engine firing from 1st to 2nd gear. This is how you put yourself into the mindset of the ONE thing.

 

Exercise, healthy eating habits, and a basic meditation practice are my personal core tenants for priming. Find what works best for you and run with it. The intention of these practices are to get your mind to the starting block. By clearing out noise, you will be able to pinpoint ONE critical objective to march towards more efficiently — a North Star, if you will.

 

If you think you can’t make time for brain-priming, think again. This is far more important than checking your morning email or Slack messages. It will set a foundation for consistent upward trajectory and replace your daily episodes of peaks and troughs.

 

What Do I Do Next?

These 3 hacks are just a starter kit of my preferred systems. It’s unreasonable to believe you’ll start doing them all at once tomorrow.

 

Test one out and see how it goes. I’d suggest starting with the “making your bed” routine, as it’s the easiest and most practical. If it helps, great! Iterate on it, and make it your own. If not, move on and try something else. 

 

Whatever you do, don’t let yourself believe you can’t make one small change to improve your daily life and ability to focus. What do you have to lose? In the case of Hacks #1 and #2, I’d say only about 1 minute.