A couple of weeks ago, I went out to grab a beer with a long-time friend - one of those with whom you can meet once every few months and still sit for hours.
After I shared some recent updates from my life, he asked: “But Anton, how the hell do you find the time to do all that???”.
It was the ~10th time I was asked this question by friends/coworkers, so I decided to finally write an article.
I confess, I’m a productivity-freak-goal-oriented person.
In the last 2 years I:
Trained for and finished an Olympic Triathlon in <3 hours.
Was promoted for the second time in 3 years, to a Director.
Read 130+ books on various genres.
Wrote >330 LinkedIn posts.
Started Leading Developers and , published >70 articles and grew them to 15K and 3.6K subscribers.
Got married and have the cutest ever 10 months-old boy :)
I really don’t mean it as bragging, but as proof that I treat my time very seriously. I’ve read everything I can find on the topic, and tried tons of methods.
Today I’m going to cover the 5 simple methods that actually work for me. Even if you only implement small parts of 1 & 2 - I promise it’ll save you hours each day:
Cut - make it very VERY hard to do things you don’t want to do. Seriously, super hard. Harder than James Clear suggests.
Simplify - optimize the hell out of the necessary evil.
Combine - think creatively where you can do 2 things at once. You’ll be surprised by the possibilities!
Use goals that work - experiment until you find what works for you. For me, only weekly ones worked.
Your calendar is your best tool - no lists of tasks in 3 different apps.
And don’t forget to let go once in a while :)
1. Cut - make bad habits very VERY hard
Our biggest time-spender is our phone - 4:30 hours each day on average. I was just a little better, with 4 screen hours per day.
I’ve tried to reduce it for YEARS. I’ve installed multiple app blockers, but all of them had the awful ‘request 5 more minutes’ button, which of course I used all the time…
I finally figured out that making bad habits hard is not enough. Very hard is not enough either. A bad habit must be VERY VERY hard to do.
So I’ve looked for the best app I could find. The monk mode of ‘Roots’ is exactly what I was thinking about:
It lets me target specific websites in addition to apps, with dedicated downtimes. I have 3:
‘No shit in the morning’ - blocking LinkedIn, Facebook, sports sites and news until 9 AM (monk mode).
‘Work time’ - Same as the above, but on normal mode.
‘Evening time’ - no news/Gmail/Slack after 9 PM (monk mode).
Well, that finally worked, getting me 55 hours back each month!
If you have an iPhone, here is an affiliate link if you want to support me while giving it a try :)
(I'll make a few dollars if you sign up using my link, and I genuinely love the product. You can also just google ‘Get Roots’).
But Anton, those are not ‘quality’ hours
Most people use their phones ‘in-between’ moments when they feel they can’t be productive anyway. In the toilet, in bed before sleep, on the bus, between meetings, and so on.
Let me break the myth of ‘non-productive’ time:
You can just download the Kindle app on your phone and read a book. the 55 hours I saved each month is ~5 books.
Or, I suggest just disconnecting and thinking some thoughts in those in-between moments. You can’t even imagine how many ideas I’ve got since my mind is free with endless scrolling.
The point here is not to stop using social apps! This whole method is about being INTENTIONAL with your time. If you wish to spend 30 minutes a day scrolling on Instagram and stick to the plan, all is good.
As Dorothy Parker once said:
2. Simplify
Optimize the hell out of the necessary evil tasks. Here are a few simple ideas:
In your work:
Slack - there are many simple tricks. My favorites are:
Most channels don’t require your immediate reading. A lot of time is wasted by reading conversations one message at a time. It’s much more efficient to put most on mute, and then schedule a time at the end of the day to go over all the missed conversations.
Organize your channels/chats by categories:
In each section, change to show only ones with unread messages, in recency order. Saves tons of scrolling time!
Email - instead of wasting minutes every time you open the inbox to make sense of it because it’s a mess, find a system that works for you. I wrote about mine in Clean up your Email Inbox in 5 minutes.
In life:
Set up automatic payment of all your bills.
Order groceries instead of going to the store.
3. Combine
The first 2 methods were for reducing bad habits. The next 3 are about how to get more good habits done.
Combine is the simplest one. Think creatively where you can do 2 things at once. I became a master of this one when Dan was born 😅
Some examples from my life:
Walking with the stroller and listening to a book on Audible.
Riding the bicycle to work while also listening to a book - sports, transportation, and knowledge :)
1-on-1 meetings and lunch together (but not always)
Doing some exercises with Dan - found things that are fun for him too.
4. Goals that work
Some people like daily goals, some plan monthly/quarterly/yearly.
I tried all of them, but for me, only weekly planning worked. Without some form of planning it’s very hard to find the motivation to do things in the time that you free for yourself.
I have a recurring meeting every Friday, where I think about what I want to achieve in the upcoming week in various areas. I use a simple rolling Google Doc with checkboxes. Here’s a typical week:
I do it on a Friday because I achieve most of it during the weekend, and it’s nice to have 80% checked off by Monday.
Check out article on planning and winning the week.
In the work part, I put things that won’t happen unless I push them. Most of the work-related ones are managed using the next method:
5. The Calendar is your best productivity tool
The main problem with task lists and goals is that there is no limit on what you can put in there. When you use a calendar to manage your tasks, and just create a meeting for everything you need to do - you’ll see visually when you planned too much.
My next step after the weekly goals is to immediately put each one on my Google Calendar, with the approximate time it’ll take. One of my Enbar’s biggest surprises when we started dating is that I use the calendar to also plan my weekends 😅
I also use it to schedule things planned way ahead. For example, if I need to schedule an appointment in two months, I’ll just put a meeting in the calendar to schedule it as far ahead as I can. That way I have no choice but to do it when the time arrives :)
Bonus
Consuming digital content can take tons of time, and not always it’s the best use of it. I shared the system I developed to do it efficiently:
And don’t forget to let go
If you got tired just from reading about my lifestyle, that’s ok 😅
First of all - it’s not for everybody. When I shared it with my friends, most people told me it’s just not for them. They prefer a slower pace, with much more relaxation. There is also a big benefit in just being in the moment, and not trying to squeeze the productivity out of every second in our lives.
That’s what works for me, and I enjoy my life much more since I started to be deliberate about it.
I find the balance by going into ‘addict mode’ every few months. Sometimes it’s a stupid game on the iPad, sometimes it’s a Netlix show, sometimes it’s a fiction book series.
The last time it was the ‘Dungeon Crawler Carl’ book series, 6 books which I devoured in a week. I read it in every spare second of my life, without doing anything productive 🙃
Content I enjoyed this week
Podcast: Strategies for becoming less distractible - ’s episode with Nir Eyal, author of Indistractable and Hooked.Highly recommended!
Book: Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life Through the Power of Storytelling by Matthew Dicks.
