Do You Hate Productivity? You Need Your Custom Productivity System

How I assembled my productivity Frankenstein after years of experiments.

🤩 Hey! I’m Alberto. With my newsletter I want to help you live your ideal life with a content-based business. I’ve been doing this since 2010.
I talk about productivity, automation, strategy and mindset.

Productivity systems are cool, but most of the times they don’t work. This is hard to admit, for a productivity nerd like me.

You know what I’m talking about. They offer a long set of rules, constraints and steps. They promise if you follow them, everything will go automatically in place. Maximum productivity, minimum stress, guaranteed.

Productivity for me is not “being busy” or “optimizing for the sake of it”. It’s using my time as best I can to fulfill my potential. There’s so much I want to do!

That’s why I fell in love with far too many productivity systems. I followed them to the T. But no one kept its promise.

Despite that, after 15 years of experiments, I am far more productive than the average. But it’s not thanks to a specific ultimate productivity system. It’s thanks to my own Frankenstein system.

I stitched together the tactics that worked best for me. In this article, you’ll see how to build a productivity system tailored to your needs and keep improving your efficiency forever.

Why productivity systems don’t work

Productivity experts are rockstars nowadays.

They gather huge audiences, sell millions of books, and command astronomical fees. Am I saying they are wrong?

No (except for the inevitable fraudsters). Their systems have worked for them or their clients.

But you are not them. And you are not their clients. And you don’t have their 1:1 help.

You are not the typical use case

Many famous systems (GTD, for example) are born in the corporate world. They are intended for teams and complex projects, not for personal productivity.

Your situation is peculiar

Even ****when you try a “personal productivity” system, you probably have specific challenges and limitations that clash with it. For example, you could just need help to manage your side hustle in your spare time, while the system works well to manage your entire day.

The system isn’t practical

I’ve seen this often on YouTube. Productivity influencers design systems that, on paper, are miraculous.

But they don’t survive the impact with real life. They were not tested extensively.

How to assemble your productivity Frankenstein

I’ve been a content solopreneur since 2010. When you work for yourself, you are in charge of your productivity. You can’t rely on an external controller.

Through all these years, I devoured books, podcasts, videos and newsletters about productivity. I tested dozens of tactics, threw away the ineffective ones, and stitched together my own Frankenstein system.

It just works:

• it requires about 10 minutes of active maintenance every day, plus 15-20 minutes at the end of the week,

• it helps me remember everything,

• it maximizes my productivity,

• it’s resilient, even with a child and/or wife disrupting my sleep for years,

• it’s adaptable to a life that constantly changes.

Here’s what I did (and you can do, too).

I’ll describe my system later. It’s not the focus of this article.

Fall in love

I am a productivity nerd. I have a hard time resisting headlines that promise to “save 10 hours per week” or “put your life on autopilot”. So, I consume a lot of productivity advice.

Sometimes, a tip, habit or tactic seems the perfect fit. I get excited like my 5-year-old son with a new Lego set.

Maybe you are saner than me… You don’t want to spend your free time studying productivity advice. But you still need to find a system that makes you say “Yes! This is what I need”. Don’t choose productivity tactics that feel like work.

So scour the web in search of a solution to your most pressing problem. Find something that excites you, or at least that sucks less than the rest, and start implementing it regularly.

It can be a complex system or a simple daily hack. Anything goes if it gets things moving.

Commit

Every productivity technique is a habit you need to learn. And you need weeks to implant a habit into your brain.

Commit to practicing every new tactic for at least three weeks.

In the beginning, you’ll need reminders and willpower. Do your best to stay consistent.

Keep track of your daily success somewhere visible. For instance, use a calendar on your office wall to track the days you have practiced the technique by checking them off.

After a few days, it’ll become more natural. Only then, you will be able to evaluate the results.

Develop awareness

Our daily frenzy clouds objective judgement.

If I can’t remember what I did during the day, I can’t say what’s working in my productivity system. We need to be more aware.

Full objectivity is a mirage. But we need to get as close to it as possible.

Every day, try to answer these questions:

• What was your stress level?

• How was your energy at different moments in the day?

• How much did you get done?

• Did you respect your plan for the day? If not, why?

• Did you make real progress? Or did busy work dominate your day?

• Did you spend too long just managing your productivity system?

• Consider your past productivity before introducing the new technique. What did improve? What got worse? Why? How can you further improve?

Don’t get attached

I know I told you to fall in love, but never marry a productivity technique.

Avoid confirmation bias. You’ll have to make changes. A bad choice doesn’t mean you’re stupid.

Sometimes I desperately wanted to make something work. I spent so much time learning and implementing it. I didn’t want to be wrong.

I chose to the best of my knowledge. Testing the technique improved my knowledge.

Don’t throw the baby with the bathwater

My first crush was GTD (Getting Things Done). Some people still love it decades after its introduction.

It was the first productivity system I tried. Setting it up took days.

But it wasn’t working. Too much maintenance, too limited results. I abandoned GTD as a whole, but I kept using several of its tactics and concepts.

You’ll often experience this. Something you try doesn’t work for you. But you still can use a part of it or the underlying theory.

Keep learning from the right sources (right for YOU)

Only new information can suggest better paths to explore.

You don’t need to spend hours every week studying productivity. But you need to keep your finger on the pulse.

So, keep an eye on productivity authors, publications, and the best-reviewed books. Follow the ones who share your philosophy of life.

Be also ready to catch tiny process details from the people you mostly admire. For example, I got a lot from Tim Ferris’ podcast and books. It doesn’t matter if the guest is an athlete, a scientist or an actor, Tim always digs deep into her routines. When it’s a figure I aspire to emulate, I’ll probably love some of his/her productivity tactics.

Accept impermanence

This constant updating seems exhausting, right? Why can’t you settle on a system and forget about it, possibly for the rest of your life?

It would be awesome. But you probably noticed it doesn’t work that way. The truth is that everything in life is in a constant state of flow:

• you move,

• you change job,

• you marry,

• you have a child,

• you develop a new passion,

• you have another child,

• you get ill,

• you develop a chronic condition,

• you have to take care of ageing parents,

• …

These are major events. But minor changes constantly derail your supposedly perfect routines. Keep updating them, don’t resist the change. Be like water.

So, what does my system look like?

Here’s how it works:

• I keep my task list in Todoist and connect Todoist to my Google Calendar.

• On my Calendar, I block time for important activities and various obligations and add events with specific dates and times (like calls).

• In the weekend, I spend 10-20 minutes to schedule the tasks for the week ahead, setting a specific date and time for each one.

• Seeing the tasks on the Calendar, prevents overscheduling. Having them in Todoist, prevents forgetting about overdue tasks.

• When something new without a fixed date and time comes up, I add it to my Todoist inbox. This way, I don’t forget about it, but I also don’t get distracted.

• At the end of each day, I review my inbox, do the quickest tasks, and consider whether to add the remaining ones to my calendar or add them to the backlog.

• I use Notion to manage specific projects, like creating content or working for a client.

There are finer details. If you’re interested, drop me a comment, so I’ll write about it in the future.

Your next step

If you always despised productivity advice, it’s probably because it feels too rigid. I hope you now understand you can adapt it to your inclinations.

I hope so, because if you discard every productivity technique, you suffocate your potential:

• so many forces pull you away from your calling, you need safeguards to protect your best work,

• if you never try productivity tactics, you don’t even know how much you’re capable of.

But I hope this article helps you also if you’re just disappointed by your productivity level. Use this method to gradually improve it.

And if you need 1:1 help, become a paid subscriber. I will be able to support you through the chat.

Click below to upgrade and get:

• 🗂️ A monthly template for automating your business and boosting productivity

• 📙 My book: "Stress-free Niche Finding" (available Sep '24)

• 💬 Community and 1:1 coaching via chat