One of the biggest productivity “hacks” I’ve found is severely restricting the number of tasks I work on in a given day. With most goals, there are several things you need to do to move forward. Take, for example, a job search for a software engineering role. You need to do LeetCode, study system design, apply to jobs, network, and send out applications. The naive approach is to dedicate 30-90 minutes daily to each task. Seems solid, doesn’t work. What happens is you end up with a bloated to-do list that just gives you more reasons to procrastinate. It becomes overwhelming, and you’ll probably end up doing nothing besides thinking about all the things that you should be doing. I’ve found that the only tenable approach is to pick three tasks for the day.
The first one is a core priority that requires your full mental bandwidth. For the job search example, this would be LeetCode or system design. This is the task that you want to dedicate most of your day to and the one you should start with. I set a goal of 5 hours for this task, but I’ll adjust it based on how the previous days have been going. An easy mistake to make here is to spend too much time, especially when you are starting a new goal. You might feel like spending more time, but do not do this. It will work for a few days or maybe even a week, but you will end up burning out and not being able to get back into the task. When you’re working on a task and know the next step, it’s natural to want to keep going, but this is the best time to stop. If I’m coming up on the 5-hour mark and think of a new approach to a LeetCode question, I’ll hold off on implementing it. That way, the next day I’m itching to get back into it. Plus, that rewarding feeling of a win early in the day is often enough to snowball. The opposite is to keep pushing past the 5-hour mark until you hit a roadblock and call it there. The next day, you’ll be tired from working too much and dreading coming back to the task because you know you’ll have to struggle through whatever it was that made you stop the day before.
Second, you’ll want to pick a task that’s important, but doesn’t require your full brain capacity. For the job search, this is sending out applications. It’s time-consuming and necessary, but skimming job postings and filling out Workday forms can be done on autopilot at half-brain capacity. Another example of this could be checking messages and emails at work or reviewing pull requests. You can think of this as a way to wind down from the previous intensive task that you have been working on. You’re still working towards your goal, but after the intensive top-priority task you just completed, it feels like a cake walk.
After those two tasks, you should pick something seemingly unrelated to your main goal. Ideally, something physical like running, going to the gym, or whatever other activity you enjoy doing. I say seemingly unrelated, because this too helps with your main goal. If all you do is work on one thing, your performance will inevitably deteriorate if you don’t burn out entirely. You are not a task-completing automaton; your brain needs variety and new stimulus, which is why this is important, even if it seems unrelated. In addition to physical activity on some days, this task should be some other administrative life task, like getting groceries, cleaning, or doing your finances. It might seem like these are all things you can circumvent by ordering food delivery or straight-up ignoring, but these will end up hurting your performance if you ignore them for too long.
Completing a laundry list of tasks will make you feel productive, but you should consider whether those tasks are meaningfully contributing to your main goal. As Paul Graham wrote in his article Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule, “You can’t write or program well in units of an hour. That’s barely enough time to get started.” If you’re running through a list of errands, having 10 tasks and breaking up your day into little chunks will work fine. But if you’re trying to get anything meaningful done, like completing a personal project, writing, or studying, then breaking up your day into more than a couple of chunks is counterproductive to your goals.