Unleash Even More Time and Energy With an Optimized System for Personal Productivity

Hello Full Potential Beings good morning! Another beautiful day is upon us and it’s up to us to decide how to use it!

I’m very grateful for all the blessings in my life. The lifestyle, livelihood and legacy that it feels like I’m building on every day. These posts and your involvement also feel like they are part of it! Also Alexandria said she likes it when I talk about her in posts, so we’ll see if she reads this one today and thanks me 😉 .

In building on yesterday’s post I’ve been thinking a lot on how to DO what needs to be done each day.

It seems one of the most important things is how you use your time. And what you use that time for.

So knowing what you’re focused on and how to focus your time effectively are worthy of a lot of attention and optimization.

I have used a lot of tools over the years and increasingly tried to ‘tighten’ my system so that there’s a ‘single point of truth’ where I could see all things needing to be done now and into the future.

It feels like I’m striving for that future end state where I know all that must be done, when it must be done and I have it all in once place. Including the vision I have for things to be completed way in the future. A kind of vision board if you will. But also a road map to how I’m going to make that vision happen. The series of tasks that I or my team need to complete to make it a reality.

Also displayed in a way that feels easy on my consciousness. Based on RELEVANCY. I don’t need to see everything all at once, it can feel overwhelming. So being able to hide things and only show what is the most relevant right now. I have used a mind map for this because I can fold and unfold tasks.

The other thing about relevancy is continually updating the list so that only what still needs to be done is available. Thats why erasing things feels so good. Completely erasing the white board and starting over. Or starting with a fresh sheet of paper and pulling in everything from my digital system into it.

Additionally it’s thinking about what tools are the best for delegation and tracking. To that end I purchased a lifetime deal in Taskade and I use time doctor. Taskade helps me organize team tasks and then Time doctor helps me track their time.

The single point of truth that seems to work for me in terms of what works for me in simplicity is Things. Storing tasks digitally on things and then having offline system where I can consolidate what’s relevant now.

I like to use Things for some reason, it just feels the most intuitive and simple. Though I’ve definitely tried to use other systems, I just always keep coming back to that as my primary digital storage of to-dos.. just so simple.

I’ve also tried going simpler with Google sheets or even a bear note to track to dos.. sometimes I like to freely structure my day and tasks in a simple note.. I go back and forth sometimes. But for storage of future tasks, nothing beats a proper to-do app.

I was storing future tasks in Mind Maps but I don’t think that’s the best place to store all the future stuff I need to do. I can put them in Things and it will pull up when I need to see it. Keeping my mind map more clean and pure.

But I do love mind maps for the purpose of planning out what tasks need to be done. I can create an infinite number of branches and bubbles and recognize them as I’m creating a plan for how I’m going to complete something. I can group and organize tasks until everything makes sense. It really is indispensable as part of the arsenal of tools for planning.

Some key ideas so far:
— Office more than online (Focus sheet / white board)
— We want to be relevant (continually updating white board or focus sheet is good for this)
— But we want a log we can review (taking photos of white board of focus sheets and putting into Bear notes) to note progress & achievement
— We want to have a clear vision (This can be stored digitally in bear notes) .. of our goals, our mission, our values. Again this can all be part of the same note.
— We want to have a single point of truth when it comes to the things we need to do, or as consolidated as possible (your preferred digital app.. for me such as Things for tasks and Bear for notes)
— You want to have a system where it’s easy to delegate and track to others. For me I’m using Taskade now since I got a lifetime deal, and Time Doctor for tracking time.
— It should be simple and fun to use.. this will be personal to you. I like To-do apps for getting things done and sometimes use mind maps as a to-do program as well.
— It should be highly visible .. I like using widgets and white boards for this purpose. Having things in the physical, offline in front of me + a timer seems to be the most focused and efficient way to get things done.
— On the phone: having a clear focus is very important. If you’re going to use your phone you want to have a phone based system to return back to.

The Things widget is great for seeing things at a glance for today. But I have also just used a simple note in Bear and a widget for accessing that note.

Key points:

• You should definitely have some kind of system
• You should be continually tweaking and optimizing it
• The system should be tactically done most of the time offline when possible for focus and conservation of brainpower. Example: focus sheets (on a clip board) and white boards.
• You can go back to your online system when you need to clarify what to put next on your white board or focus sheet.
• Using timers on a stop watch or something can be a helpful way to concentrate attention on the next task. It can also make it feel more game line and make you more aware of where your time is going.
• You should structure plenty of time to be OFF your system — to relax and enjoy life. To be social. To be fulfilled. The point here is not to stress, but to be hyper efficient ing getting things done so you can RELAX and enjoy life as much as possible!