1+1 does not always equal 2: How to build synergies into your day

One of the principles of sound goal management is considering the effect of goals upon each other. Some goals don’t interact, others conflict, and the best ones form synergies.

Synergy occurs when two or more things (e.g., goals or mechanical gears) have an effect greater than the sum of their parts.

Usually, when people talk about setting goals, pursuing goals, etc., they discuss goals in isolation from each other. This is probably because it’s easier to think of goals as separate entities. It’s easier to choose them and define them, and in our minds, they’re associated with different hopes, dreams, and aspirations.

Example: Last year I was driving an hour to-and-from work, and they happened to be AM hours, my peak energy period. What to do? I decided to start dictating some books I was trying to write. One fiction (which is resting for a bit) and one nonfiction book on productivity. I dictated the fiction book on the way to work, the productivity book on the way home.

How is this synergistic?

While drafting the novel, I learned all about my productivity habits and those of others. This informed the drafting of my other book — more often than not, the thinking and dictating on the commute in gave me something to think and dictate on the commute out.

In turn, my writing of a productivity book forced me to ask tough questions of myself, ultimately improving my efficacy in drafting the novel.

Done alone, I’m not sure I would’ve stuck with the draft of the novel, and it would be worse off.

And done alone, many of the most important insights in my book wouldn’t have been made.

Another example: Yoga and meditation. Both are great by themselves, but the former is usually taught along with the latter for synergistic reasons. Meditation, done first, helps the practitioner get their mind in tune with their body. Meditation after a yoga session then connects the body back to the mind.

Or: Running and then doing some challenging mental activity. During the run, think through the task. Doing so distracts you from the tightness in your calves or how nice it would be to stop. After the run, you’re all adrenaline-d up, the thoughts are flowing. Next thing you know, the procrastinated, anxiety-ridden task is checked off. Boom goes the cannon.

Synergy also occurs when we use one goal to motivate action towards another goal: By alternating sessions of each, we motivate ourselves to push through what we don’t enjoy to get to the actions we do enjoy. Maybe (1) applying for jobs really motivates you to (2) complete your side project.

Do you have synergies in your daily schedule? If not, consider whether a change makes sense for you.

Do you see opportunities to increase synergy? Consider taking advantage of them.

The key word here is consider. No productivity principle applies to everyone. But this one — it comes pretty close.

An obsession with productivity is an American past time What you know, might know, and probably don’t know about Thomas Jefferson — PART TWO

In my last post, I discussed a few of Thomas Jefferson’s technological lifehacks. In this one, I’m digging deeper into his principles of productivity. My goal isn’t to bathe in his productivity glory, but rather to take a critical look and ascertain things to emulate as well as things to avoid.

Worthy of Emulation

Self-awareness

Being quick to anger (like many of us), Jefferson employed the Count to Ten rule before responding.

And, being realistic, he kept the Count to One Hundred rule on hand too. (How’s that for an awkward pause?)

Emotional intelligence

According to Jefferson:

Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst and cold.

Yup.

Mindfulness

Another one of Jefferson’s sweet maxims:

Nothing is troublesome that one does willingly.

Experiment: Do the dishes just because, then some other time, do the dishes because someone asks you to.

See the difference?

Wherever you are, be there.

As you might expect from someone as productive as Jefferson, he did not like to sit idly, even in the company of others:

[When we’re together,] we should talk over the lessons of the day, or lose them in Music, Chess, or the merriments of our family companions.

Removing needless anxiety

Echoing Epictetus, Jefferson implored people to save their anxiety for things that were certain to happen:

How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened!

Piece of paper, folded in half. In one column, the things you’re anxious about. In the other, checkmarks for those that actually came to pass. After a few weeks or so, take a look.

Told you.

Organizational efficiency

Jefferson was obsessed with efficiency (perhaps too much so, discussed below.) He was constantly learning how to make things more efficient and well-organized. In addition to the lifehacks described in Part One, Jefferson re-designed the layout of his home and organization of his kitchen based on efficiencies he saw in European manors.

Zero

One of the foremost productivity maxims: An empty mind is a clear mind. What I call the Zero State in my book.

Jefferson practiced this, keeping a little notebook with him at all times. He was very attached to this notebook (not unlike my relationship with my journals), transcribing his notes to a different notebook before erasing and using it again the next day.

Long term thinking

I love this quote. It reflects both long term thinking and the importance of chipping away at big projects:

Take care of your cents: Dollars will take care of themselves!

Worthy of Avoidance

Neglecting the short term world

As I’ve written about at length, long term productivity requires a careful balancing of the short term world’s obligations too.

This includes day-to-day things like paying bills.

When Jefferson died, he was 2.4 million in debt. (Clearly his dollars and cents quote above was purely metaphorical.)

The details (like paying bills) become the big things if we let them.

Having no boundary between work and life

This is a picture of Jefferson’s bed, located directly between his office and living quarters:

Credit: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

Jefferson has this amazing, almost beyond-imagination mansion/palace, and he can’t set aside a quiet part of the house for his work?

Enough said.

Overquantification

Jefferson wrote down and measured everything. Everything. In some ways, this is a good thing. In other ways, this might be a little much:

Never delegating

It is sometimes good and efficient to delegate a task. Yet Jefferson says:

Never trouble another with what you can do yourself.*

*This is also a terrible quote for someone who owned several slaves.

Hustling for the sake of hustling

Jefferson was one of the many people who said:

Never put off to tomorrow what you can do today.

But… that’s not true. Sometimes it makes perfect, long term sense to put something off.

Good planning is good long term planning. Checking off a day’s to-do list is not necessarily checking off a week’s or month’s or year’s to-do list. And it’s the latter that count.

(I’m thinking of writing more about “presidential productivity,” so if you would like to see more stuff like this, please let me know!)

An obsession with productivity is an American past time: What you know, might know, and probably don’t know about Thomas Jefferson — PART ONE

First to pen the Declaration of Independence, first secretary of state, first president to buy nearly a million acres… Thomas Jefferson was a man of firsts.

But that stuff’s known.

Less known is how Thomas Jefferson was among the first American lifehackers. He attached a revolving book holder to his desk so he could have five books open at a time. (Twenty sat at his feet.)

(It is unclear if he was multi-tasking or simply being an efficient cross-referencer, but his output suggests the latter.)

Jefferson also attached an apparatus to his pen that replicated everything he wrote. Yes, not only did he photocopy before photocopying was a thing, he did it simultaneously as he wrote. Early American auto-save and cloud backup.

Credit: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

(Oh, and candleholders in office chairs? He started those too.)

Wired magazine sums it all up:

He is someone who was trying to adapt the latest technology in every realm of existence: science, how the house functions, in the garden. He is trying to put into use new ideas[.]

More important than the above (after all, tools are not productive in and of themselves), and perhaps lesser known, are the principles behind Jefferson’s approach to work and life. 

There is much more to be learned from principles than technologies.

As I describe in the forthcoming Part Two, not all of Jefferson’s productivity principles were sound. He was, in some ways, not a “long term person” at all. Still, there is much to learn. 

Keep an eye out for Part Two and subsequent posts re: presidential productivity, .