The Unexpected Key to Boosting Your Productivity | The Way We Work, a TED series

The Trap of Being a Machine

In this section, the speaker talks about their desire to be a machine and how they started a newsletter called Super Organizers to profile top performers in various fields. They also discuss their personal experiments with productivity hacks and share the best trick they've learned.

The Ideal of Being a Machine is a Trap

• The speaker has always wanted to be a machine because they believed it would make them more productive.

• However, the ideal of being a machine is actually a trap because it makes us blind to the roots of our actual problems.

• We are emotional beings, and learning to skillfully recognize and work with our emotions is the only way to actually be productive day-to-day.

Three Things Productive People Do

• The most productive people in the world recognize that emotions can affect productivity and do three things to work with it.

• They're aware when they have a problem, observe what's going on without judgment so they can understand it, and keep experimenting until it changes.

Emotional Mastery is Difficult but Necessary

• To do this well requires emotional mastery that is very difficult to practice.

• Awareness is the first step towards productivity. It means being aware of problems in your productivity.

• Observing without judgment was really difficult for the speaker. But once they got beneath that, they began to notice something really surprising.

How Regular Practices Help Maintain Awareness

In this section, the speaker talks about how regular practices help maintain awareness. They share an example from their own life about how they struggled with staying on top of their inbox.

Regular Practices Help Maintain Awareness

• The most productive people have regular practices that they use to maintain awareness.

• Sometimes it's journaling, sometimes it's mindfulness, sometimes it's just a walk, and sometimes it's therapy. But everyone has something.

Example from the Speaker's Life

• The speaker has trouble staying on top of their inbox.

• After a lot of reflection, they realized that they had to face the fact that the backlog was causing problems throughout their company.

• Once the speaker was aware of the problem, they could start observing without judgment what usually leads to their inbox being crowded.

Conclusion

In this section, the speaker concludes by emphasizing the importance of emotional mastery in productivity and encourages listeners to become more aware of their emotions and work with them skillfully.

Emotional Mastery is Key

• Being aware of and observing how our emotions can affect us can open up a lot of flexibility and freedom to make progress when we'd otherwise be stuck.

• What's underneath our productivity problems isn't just a need for a new tool or system but something going on in our emotional lives.

• To be truly productive day-to-day requires emotional mastery that is difficult but necessary.

The Importance of Experimentation

In this section, the speaker discusses the importance of experimentation in finding solutions to productivity problems.

Recognizing a Problem

• The speaker avoided their inbox, causing it to pile up and become overwhelming.

• Productive people recognize problems and observe them without judgment.

Experimentation

• Once a problem is recognized, productive people experiment with new solutions to find out what works.

• Preconceptions about what's in and out of bounds can limit experimentation.

• The speaker tried various experiments to deal with their inbox problems but none solved the problem completely.

• The speaker used their own desire not to let people down as motivation to keep their inbox clean by having a virtual assistant check in on them regularly.

Overcoming Shame and Guilt

In this section, the speaker discusses how shame and guilt can prevent us from finding effective solutions to productivity problems.

Asking for Help

• The speaker felt ashamed at first for needing a babysitter for their work.

• Having someone else check in on you can make a big difference in staying on task.

• Overcoming shame and guilt requires acknowledging that we are not machines and being willing to ask for help when needed.

Finding What Works for You

In this section, the speaker emphasizes the importance of trying different approaches to find what works best for each individual.

Trying Different Approaches

• What works for one person may not work for another.

• The only way to find out what works is to try different approaches.

• Productivity is not just about software and tools, but also about our brains, bodies, and emotions.

Conclusion

In this section, the speaker summarizes the main points of the talk.

Main Points

• Identifying what's hiding underneath productivity is the best productivity hack.

• Finding effective solutions requires experimentation, overcoming shame and guilt, and trying different approaches to find what works for you.