Top 6 Productivity Tips

College students, writers, lawyers, software developers, and “knowledge workers” in general will find the following recommendations helpful for increasing productivity and decreasing procrastination.

When working, you do different sorts of things, different kinds of tasks. You reply to emails to confirm meeting times and you also write the memo that will change the direction of the company for the next five years. The email to confirm a meeting time is something a personal assistant could do for you. But only you could write the memo that will change company direction. Some work you do is idiosyncratic to you. Only you could do it. That’s your sui generis work.

If you are able to make a distinction between the important, deep, idiosyncratic work you do and the less important, superficial, busy-work you do, then you should apply the following recommendations to your important, deep, sui generis work. Most of these strategies work because they make use of habit, ritual, automaticity, environmental stimuli and other so-called “System 1” factors, instead of counting on the weaker System 2. (Subscribe at saintexpeditus.substack.com to learn more about procrastination as it relates to the dual-process psychology of System 1 and System 2.)