Acquiring some skills is mostly about deliberate, explicit information transfer.  For example, one might explicitly learn the capital of Missouri, or the number of miles one can drive before needing an oil change, or how to use the quadratic formula to solve quadratic equations.

For other skills, practitioners' skill rests largely on semi-conscious, non-explicit patterns of perception and action.  I have in mind here such skills as:

• Managing your emotions and energy levels;
• Building strong relationships;
• Making robust plans;
• Finding angles of attack on a mathematical problem;
• Writing persuasively;
• Thinking through charged subjects without bias;

and so on.  Experts in these skills will often be unable to accurately and explicitly describe how to do what they do, but they will be skilled nonetheless.

I'd like to share some thoughts on how to learn such "soft skills".

I've heard of the concept of "weirdness points" many times before, but after a bit of searching I can't find a definitive post describing the concept, so I've decided to make one.  As a disclaimer, I don't think the evidence backing this post is all that strong and I am skeptical, but I do think it's strong enough to be worth considering, and I'm probably going to make some minor life changes based on it.

-

Chances are that if you're reading this post, you're probably a bit weird in some way.

No offense, of course.  In fact, I actually mean it as a compliment.  Weirdness is incredibly important.  If people weren't willing to deviate from society and hold weird beliefs, we wouldn't have had the important social movements that ended slavery and pushed back against racism, that created democracy, that expanded social roles for women, and that made the world a better place in numerous other ways.

Many things we take for granted now as why our current society as great were once... weird.

Joseph Overton theorized that policy develops through six stages: unthinkable, then radical, then acceptable, then sensible, then popular, then actual policy.  We could see this happen with many policies -- currently same-sex marriage is making its way from popular to actual policy, but not to long ago it was merely acceptable, and not too long before that it was pretty radical.

Some good ideas are currently in the radical range.  Effective altruism itself is such a collection of beliefs typical people would consider pretty radical.  Many people think donating 3% of their income is a lot, let alone the 10% demand that Giving What We Can places, or the 50%+ that some people in the community do.

And that's not all.  Others would suggest that everyone become vegetarian, advocating for open borders and/or universal basic income, theabolishment of gendered language, having more resources into mitigating existential risk, focusing on research into Friendly AI, cryonicsand curing death, etc.

While many of these ideas might make the world a better place if made into policy, all of these ideas are pretty weird.

Weirdness, of course, is a drawback.  People take weird opinions less seriously.

The absurdity heuristic is a real bias that people -- even you -- have.  If an idea sounds weird to you, you're less likely to try and believe it,even if there's overwhelming evidence.  And social proof matters -- if less people believe something, people will be less likely to believe it.  Lastly, don't forget the halo effect -- if one part of you seems weird, the rest of you will seem weird too!

(Update: apparently this concept is, itself, already known to social psychology as idiosyncrasy credits.  Thanks, Mr. Commenter!)

...But we can use this knowledge to our advantage.  The halo effect can work in reverse -- if we're normal in many ways, our weird beliefs will seem more normal too.  If we have a notion of weirdness as a kind of currency that we have a limited supply of, we can spend it wisely, without looking like a crank.

All of this leads to the following actionable principles:

Recognize you only have a few "weirdness points" to spend.  Trying to convince all your friends to donate 50% of their income to MIRI, become a vegan, get a cryonics plan, and demand open borders will be met with a lot of resistance.   But -- I hypothesize -- that if you pick one of these ideas and push it, you'll have a lot more success.

Spend your weirdness points effectively.  Perhaps it's really important that people advocate for open borders.  But, perhaps, getting people to donate to developing world health would overall do more good.  In that case, I'd focus on moving donations to the developing world and leave open borders alone, even though it is really important.  You should triage your weirdness effectively the same way you would triage your donations.

Clean up and look good.  Lookism is a problem in society, and I wish people could look "weird" and still be socially acceptable.  But if you're a guy wearing a dress in public, or some punk rocker vegan advocate, recognize that you're spending your weirdness points fighting lookism, which means less weirdness points to spend promoting veganism or something else.

Advocate for more "normal" policies that are almost as good.   Of course, allocating your "weirdness points" on a few issues doesn't mean you have to stop advocating for other important issues -- just consider being less weird about it.  Perhaps universal basic income truly would be a very effective policy to help the poor in the United States.  But reforming the earned income tax credit and relaxing zoning laws would also both do a lot to help the poor in the US, and such suggestions aren't weird.

Use the foot-in-door technique and the door-in-face technique.  The foot-in-door technique involves starting with a small ask and gradually building up the ask, such as suggesting people donate a little bit effectively, and then gradually get them to take the Giving What We Can Pledge.  The door-in-face technique involves making a big ask (e.g., join Giving What We Can) and then substituting it for a smaller ask, like the Life You Can Save pledge or Try Out Giving.

Reconsider effective altruism's clustering of beliefs.  Right now, effective altruism is associated strongly with donating a lot of money and donating effectively, less strongly with impact in career choice, veganism, and existential risk.  Of course, I'm not saying that we should drop some of these memes completely.  But maybe EA should disconnect a bit more and compartmentalize -- for example, leaving AI risk to MIRI, for example, and not talk about it much, say, on 80,000 Hours.  And maybe instead of asking people to both give more AND give more effectively, we could focus more exclusively on asking people to donate what they already do more effectively.

Evaluate the above with more research.  While I think the evidence base behind this is decent, it's not great and I haven't spent that much time developing it.  I think we should look into this more with a review of the relevant literature and some careful, targeted, market research on the individual beliefs within effective altruism (how weird are they?) and how they should be connected or left disconnected.  Maybe this has already been done some?

-

Also discussed on the EA Forum and EA Facebook group.

“Your instinct is to talk your way out of the situation, but that is an instinct born of prior interactions with reasonable people of good faith, and inapplicable to this interaction…” – Ken White

One of the Less Wrong Study Hall denizens has been having a bit of an issue recently. He became an atheist some time ago. His family was in denial about it for a while, but in recent days they have 1. stopped with the denial bit, and 2. been less than understanding about it. In the course of discussing the issue during break, this line jumped out at me:

“I can defend my views fine enough, just not to my parents.”

And I thought: Well, of course you can’t, because they’re not interested in your views. At all.

I never had to deal with the Religion Argument with my parents, but I did spend my fair share of time failing to argumentatively defend myself. I think I have some useful things to say to those younger and less the-hell-out-of-the-house than me.

A clever arguer is someone that has already decided on their conclusion and is making the best case they possibly can for it. A clever arguer is not necessarily interested in what you currently believe; they are arguing for proposition A and against proposition B. But there is a specific sort of clever arguer, one that I have difficulty defining explicitly but can characterize fairly easily. I call it, as of today, the Hostile Arguer.

It looks something like this:

When your theist parents ask you, “What? Why would you believe that?! We should talk about this,” they do not actually want to know why you believe anything, despite the form of the question. There is no genuine curiosity there. They are instead looking for ammunition. Which, if they are cleverer arguers than you, you are likely to provide. Unless you are epistemically perfect, you believe things that you cannot, on demand, come up with an explicit defense for. Even important things.

In accepting that the onus is solely on you to defend your position – which is what you are implicitly doing, in engaging the question – you are putting yourself at a disadvantage. That is the real point of the question: to bait you into an argument that your interlocutor knows you will lose, whereupon they will expect you to acknowledge defeat and toe the line they define.

Someone in the chat compared this to politics, which makes sense, but I don’t think it’s the best comparison. Politicians usually meet each other as equals. So do debate teams. This is more like a cop asking a suspect where they were on the night of X, or an employer asking a job candidate how much they made at their last job. Answering can hurt you, but can never help you. The question is inherently a trap.

The central characteristic of a hostile arguer is the insincere question. “Why do you believe there is/isn’t a God?” may be genuine curiosity from an impartial friend, or righteous fury from a zealous authority, even though the words themselves are the same. What separates them is the response to answers. The curious friend updates their model of you with your answers; the Hostile Arguer instead updates their battle plan.[1]

So, what do you do about it?

Advice often fails to generalize, so take this with a grain of salt. It seems to me that argument in this sense has at least some of the characteristics of the Prisoner’s Dilemma. Cooperation represents the pursuit of mutual understanding; defection represents the pursuit of victory in debate. Once you are aware that they are defecting, cooperating in return is highly non-optimal. On the other hand, mutual defection – a flamewar online, perhaps, or a big fight in real life in which neither party learns much of anything except how to be pissed off – kind of sucks, too. Especially if you have reason to care, on a personal level, about your opponent. If they’re family, you probably do.

It seems to me that getting out of the game is the way to go, if you can do it.

Never try to defend a proposition against a hostile arguer.[2] They do not care. Your best arguments will fall on deaf ears. Your worst will be picked apart by people who are much better at this than you. Your insecurities will be exploited. If they have direct power over you, it will be abused.

This is especially true for parents, where obstinate disagreement can be viewed as disrespect, and where their power over you is close to absolute. I’m sort of of the opinion that all parents should be considered epistemically hostile until one moves out, as a practical application of the SNAFU Principle. If you find yourself wanting to acknowledge defeat in order to avoid imminent punishment, this is what is going on.

If you have some disagreement important enough for this advice to be relevant, you probably genuinely care about what you believe, and you probably genuinely want to be understood. On some level, you want the other party to “see things your way.” So my second piece of advice is this: Accept that they won’t, and especially accept that it will not happen as a result of anything you say in an argument. If you must explain yourself, write a blog or something and point them to it a few years later. If it’s a religious argument, maybe write the Atheist Sequences. Or the Theist Sequences, if that’s your bent. But don’t let them make you defend yourself on the spot.

The previous point, incidentally, was my personal failure through most of my teenage years (although my difficulties stemmed from school, not religion). I really want to be understood, and I really approach discussion as a search for mutual understanding rather than an attempt at persuasion, by default. I expect most here do the same, which is one reason I feel so at home here. The failure mode I’m warning against is adopting this approach with people who will not respect it and will, in fact, punish your use of it.[3]

It takes two to have an argument, so don’t be the second party, ever, and they will eventually get tired of talking to a wall. You are not morally obliged to justify yourself to people who have pre-judged your justifications. You are not morally obliged to convince the unconvinceable. Silence is always an option. “No comment” also works well, if repeated enough times.

There is the possibility that the other party is able and willing to punish you for refusing to engage. Aside from promoting them from “treat as Hostile Arguer” to “treat as hostile, period”, I’m not sure what to do about this. Someone in the Hall suggested supplying random, irrelevant justifications, as requiring minimal cognitive load while still subverting the argument. I’m not certain how well that will work. It sounds plausible, but I suspect that if someone is running the algorithm “punish all responses that are not ‘yes, I agree and I am sorry and I will do or believe as you say’”, then you’re probably screwed (and should get out sooner rather than later if at all possible).

None of the above advice implies that you are right and they are wrong. You may still be incorrect on whatever factual matter the argument is about. The point I’m trying to make is that, in arguments of this form, the argument is not really about correctness. So if you care about correctness, don’t have it.

Above all, remember this: Tapping out is not just for Less Wrong.

(thanks to all LWSH people who offered suggestions on this post)

After reading the comments and thinking some more about this, I think I need to revise my position a bit. I’m really talking about three different characteristics here:

1. People who have already made up their mind.
2. People who are personally invested in making you believe as they do.
3. People who have power over you.

For all three together, I think my advice still holds. MrMind puts it very concisely in the comments. In the absence of 3, though, JoshuaZ notes some good reasons one might argue anyway; to which I think one ought to add everything mentioned under the Fifth Virtue of Argument.

But one thing that ought not to be added to it is the hope of convincing the other party – either of your position, or of the proposition that you are not stupid or insane for holding it. These are cases where you are personally invested in what they believe, and all I can really say is “don’t do that; it will hurt.” Even if you are correct, you will fail for the reasons given above and more besides. It’s very much a case of Just Lose Hope Already.

I like to think that I get a lot of stuff done.  Other people have noticed this and asked me how I'm so productive.  This essay is where I try and "share my secrets", so to speak.

The real secret is that, in the past, I wasn't nearly as productive.  I struggled with procrastination, had issues completing assignments on time, and always felt like I never had enough time to do things.  But, starting in January and continuing for the past eight months, I have slowly implemented several systems and habits in my life that, taken together, have made me productive.  Productivity is not a talent I have -- I've learned to be productive over the past several months and I have habits in place where I basically cannot fail to be productive.

Hopefully these systems will work for you.  I've seen some people adopt them to some success, but I've never seen anyone do it exactly the way I do.  And perhaps it would even be bad to do it exactly the way I do, because everyone is just a little bit different.  I'm being aware of other-optimizing and letting you just know what's worked for me.  I make no claims that these systems will work for you.  Your mileage may vary.

So what are the systems?  To get you to be productive, we'll need to get you to organize, to prioritize, then to do and review.  Have those four things down and you'll have everything you need to be productive.

Organize

The first step to being productive is to be organized and remember things without memorizing them.  If we get these systems down, you won't forget your ideas, when and where events are, what tasks you need to complete, what papers you have, and what emails you have.

The Most Important Rule: Write Things Down

If you only take away one system from one category, I want it to be this one.  Whole essays can be written about these systems and this one is no different -- write things down.  Whenever you have a cool idea, an event invitation, a task, etc., write it down.  Always.  Constantly.  No excuses.

I've found in my life that stress has come in surprising part from trying to keep everything in my head.  When I write down everything I think is worth remembering, whether it be a concrete thing I need to do or just a cool yet unimportant idea I want to follow up on sometime later, I write it down.  That gets it out of my head, and I no longer feel the need to remember things (as long as I remember to look them up later), and I feel much better.

I've also found in my life that I constantly think I'll remember something and it's not worth writing down.  More than half the time, I've been wrong and forgotten the thing.  This has meant I've forgotten cool ideas and even forgotten events or to complete key items.  Always write things down, no matter how convinced you are that you'll remember them.

How do you do this?  I suggest getting something that will always be with you that you can write things down on.  For the vast majority of my readers, this can be a phone where you text yourself messages.  For a long time, I would use my smartphone to email myself notes, because I knew I'd always check my email later and then could record the note to a text document.  Later on, I moved to keeping track of ideas on Evernote and then later moved on to keeping track of ideas on Workflowy.  Workflowy costs $5 a month to use it to full potential (worth it, in my opinion), but there are free alternatives (that aren't as good, in my opinion).

However, don't shy away from the good old pen and paper if it gets the job done.  I got this notepad for $6 and it's been great.

Keep Track of Events: The Calendar

Of course, some of the things you want to write down will be particular things that need to be recorded in particularly useful places.  One of these things is events, or places you need to be at a particular time and place.  For this, you can use any calendar, but I like Google Calendar the best.  Whenever you get invited to an event, record it on your calendar.  (We'll include reviewing your calendar regularly in a bit, so you won't forget what's there.)

A common mistake I see people make is to rely on Facebook events to keep track of their events.  Perhaps this works for some people, but not all events are done through Facebook or can be done through Facebook, so you end up keeping track of events in multiple places, which causes confusion and missed events.  Wherever you record events, record all your events in one place.

Keep Track of Tasks: The To-Do List

The next thing you'll want to keep track of is tasks.  For this, you need a to-do list.  I spent a lot of my life just using a TextEdit document, but I recommend you use a dedicated app instead.  I personally use Workflowy here too, but others work great.  In the past I've used Trello to great success.  I've seen others succeed with Asana or even just a text document on the computer.

A common mistake I see people make here is using their email as their to-do list.  This might make some sense, but often emails contain information unnecessary to your tasks which slows you down, and sometimes emails contain multiple action points.  Worse, emails contain no easy way to prioritize tasks (which is really important and will be discussed in a bit).

Bottom line: Keep all your tasks in one crisp, clear place.  Don't spread out your to-do lists across multiple applications and don't put it in with a bunch of other stuff.

Action, Waiting, Reference: Stay Organized with Zones

Once you have your ideas written down, your events on your calendar, and your tasks on your to-do list, it's time to organize the materials you'll have to deal with.  Lots of physical papers and computer documents come at you throughout your day and it's time to organize them.

The trick here?  Get a surface area you can keep clear and divide it into three zones: action, waiting, and reference.

The action zone is for things that need to be done.  Have a form you need to fill out?  Something you need to read?  Even more outlandish things like a necklace you need to repair or something?  Keep everything needed for a task together in folders or with paperclips as necessary, put it in the action zone, and record the task on your to-do list.

The waiting zone is for things that eventually need to be done, but which cannot be done yet because you're waiting on something.  Perhaps you need feedback from someone, a package still needs to arrive, or the task only can be done on a certain day.  For this, keep everything grouped together in the waiting zone, and record on your to-do list what the task is and what you're waiting for.  (We'll revisit implementing zones in the to-do list in a little bit.)  Move things to action and update your to-do list when what you're waiting for arrives.

The reference zone is for things you might need to look at and need to be kept around, but are not associated with any task.  For examples, things I have had in my reference zone are passwords, details about tasks from people, items that are relevant but not necessary to the work that I'm doing, etc.

Always Inbox Zero: Apply the Folders to Your Email

Email is really messy for most people, but it doesn't have to be.  The solution here is to implement the zones in your email too.  I use Gmail, but nearly every email system includes folders these days.  Use that system to create three folders -- action, waiting, and reference -- in your email, then sort your email according to the folders and record on your to-do list.

There is no reason to have any email in your inbox.  You should be at "inbox zero" constantly.  Whenever an email comes in, process it and file it.  Got an email from Nancy that you need to reply to?  Put it in "Action" and put "Reply to Nancy's email" on your to-do list.  Got a long email from your boss that you don't even have time to read yet?  Put it in "Action" and put "Read boss's email" on your to-do list.  Then when you go back to read it, you can determine the next action item.

Emails also make sense to be put in waiting.  If it's important I get a reply from the email, I'll put it in waiting to remind myself to follow up later if necessary (more on that later).  I'll also put emails in waiting if I'm expecting a reply from someone else first, or if it's information for an action item I can't act on yet, or if I want to reply later on.

Lastly, reference is very important for emails that you need to keep around to read, but don't need to reply to.  Lots of notes that people send me get processed into my relevant Workflowy document and then kept in reference for as long as they're relevant.

Prioritize

Now that you're all organized, it's time to get in a position to do the things you need to do.  But watch out, because unless you have time to complete your entire to-do list in one sitting, it's a poor use of time to just go from the top to the bottom.  Instead, we need to go from the most important to the least important.

Eisenhower Matrix: Do What's Important

How do you prioritize?  The best tactic I've seen here is called The Eisenhower Matrix.  It comes from Steven Covey's book First Things First but is credited to President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Here, you take your to-do list and organize everything into four quadrants: important and urgent, important and not urgent, unimportant and urgent, and unimportant and not urgent.  This is very easy to do on Workflowy, and still possible on something like Trello.

There's pretty universal agreement that you complete all the "important and urgent" tasks first and the "unimportant and not urgent" tasks last.  But the real trick is that after you complete the important and urgent tasks, you should move to complete the important and not urgent tasks.  Ignore the not important and urgent tasks until you've completed all important tasks and even be comfortable with skipping unimportant tasks if necessary.  Why?  Because they're not important.

If you get this matrix down, you'll soon get ahead on your tasks, because you'll be completing important tasks before they become urgent.

Also, note the inclusion of "waiting" here as one of the tabs in my to-do list.  This is where I put tasks I can't complete yet with a note of what I'm waiting on.  Something like talking to my Dad three days from now would be tagged as "#30aug :: Talk to Dad" (using Workflowy hashtags), but I'd also do things with unclear dates, like "Brian responds to email :: Forward response to Seth".  Beware that being able to manage unclear deadlines (where you don't know what day the task will be) is something that most to-do list apps struggle with.

Timeboxing: Plan Your Day in Advance

The next prioritization thing to master is planning your day in advance.  You do this through making "time boxes" for things, or periods of time where you'll do something predefined.  For example, I'll set aside some time to work through my to-do list or to work on particular projects.  For bigger projects, I'll decide how much I want to work on them in any particular day or week and set them aside from my to-do list.  I'll then block out time for them on my calendar and end up with days like this.

Since I plan my days in advance using this timebox method, I just plan every minute of the calendar in advance and have a plan so I always know what to be doing and never miss a beat.  Of course, things come up and you'll have to change your plan for the day, but that's better than having no plan at all.

Two Minute Rule

It's important to be mindful of how much time it takes to record a task, put it in your to-do list, and prioritize it, however.  For most people, including me, it's about two minutes for any given task.  This gives rise to the "two minute rule": if doing somethign would take less than two minutes, just do it now.  Likewise, if it would take over two minutes, put it in your to-do list and do it at the best time.

Do

Now that you have your to-do list set and timeboxes for when you're going to work and on what, it's time to actually do the work.

The Pomodoro Technique

The ideal timebox should be a length that is a multiple of thirty minutes so you can do the most powerful productivity thing there is: The Pomodoro Technique.  Beware that it doesn't work for some, but I do urge you to give it a fair shake and a few tries, because for those whom the Pomodoro works, the Pomodoro Technique works wonders.

Here's how you do it.  Set a timer for 25 minutes.  During those 25 minutes (a) work only on your task at hand; (b) do not do anything else, even for a second; (c) be completely focused; (d) be free from distractions; (e) and do not multi-task. There are some acceptable things to do during a Pomodoro, however: go to the bathroom, drink, listen to music.  But there are tons more things not to do during a Pomodoro: check Facebook, read your email, etc.  The list will go on.

After the timer expires, take a five minute break.  During these five minutes, do anything you'd like except the task on hand.  Even if you feel like the break is boring and you're itching to get back on task, don't.  You're only hurting yourself in the long-run.  This five minute break will restore your focus, keep you grounded, provide a way to think through your ideas in a different setting, and prevent you from needing longer breaks later in the day.

It should be noted, however, that the Pomodoro can be a bit difficult to get in the habit of, though.  To solve this, I've found it useful to work my way up to the full Pomodoro by spending a month getting used to "15 minutes of work, 5 minutes break", then another month doing "20 minutes of work, 5 minutes break", and then finally "25 minutes of work, 5 minutes break".

Different people have tried other multiples besides 25 and 5, but I'm still convinced that 25-5 is the ideal split.  Perhaps 27-3 could work better for advanced Pomodoro users, but I wouldn't push it further.  I've seen things like 90-30 or 30-10, and all of these seem to involve working just a little too long (losing focus) and then taking a lot more break than is necessary.  Of course, if it works for you, then it works.

Here's the 25-5 stopwatch I use and my 20-5 stopwatch.  I've also liked Tomato Timer.com, but any timer can work.

Be Comfortable with Breaks

The important lesson of working a lot is to be comfortable with taking a break.  The novice productive person will think it virtuous to work clear through a break and onward, thinking that he or she is making even better use of their time, defeating all those sissy workers who need breaks!  But really, this person is just setting up their own downfall, because they'll crash and burn.

Burnout is real and one of the most dangerous things you can do is train yourself to feel guilty about not working.  So you need to remember to take breaks.  The break in a Pomodoro is a good one, but I also recommend taking a larger break (like 30 minutes) after completing three or four Pomodoros.

One particularly good break I'd like to give a shout-out to is to take a nap.  Taking a nap at a fairly regular time has health benefits (see also here, here, and here) and doesn't harm your night sleep if you nap for 20 minutes and don't nap too late in the afternoon or evening.  In fact, I've actually found naps to be a time saver instead of time "wasted" for a break, because I can sleep less at night and still feel rested and be focused throughout the day.

Keep Your Energy Up

Another thing to prevent your chance of crashing and needing a long break to restore your energy is to keep your energy up.  I recommend drinking something that is somewhat sugary but not too sugary (I drink water-diluted lemonade in a 25%-75% mix) and remembering to exercise on a regular basis.  Also, eating healthy and sleeping right works wonders for keeping your attention on your work.

Review

Of course, it's not enough to do if you're not going to learn from how you're doing and improve.  I suggest you review your life on multiple levels -- daily, weekly, monthly, and once every six months.

For the daily review, I keep track of whether I've succeeded at certain habits like exercising and eating right, and log the amount of time I've spent on various things so I can keep track of my time usage.  I also complete other relevant logs, and then spend a bit of time reflecting how things have gone for the day and think of ways to repeat successes and avoid mistakes.  I then check the plan for the next day and tweak it if necessary.  This process takes me about 15 to 20 minutes.

For the weekly review, I go through my action-waiting-reference zones wherever they exist (physical piles, email, and computer folders) and process them -- make sure everything there is still relevant and still belongs in the same place.  I'll remove whatever needs to be removed at this stage and remind myself what I'm working on.  I'll organize and clean anything that isn't organized at this stage and get everything together.  I'll then quickly re-read my strategic plan and plan out the week in accordance with my goals.  Recently, I've set amounts of time per week I want to be spending on certain projects, so it's now a matter of making a schedule that works.  This process usually takes me 45 minutes to an hour.

For the monthly review, I reflect on the habits I've been trying to build for the month and decide what habits I want to keep, what habits I want to add, and what habits I want to subtract.  I review how the month as a whole went and think about what I can do to repeat successes and avert future failures.  I then write up a reflection and publish it on my blog.  This process usually takes me two hours.

For the six month review, I return to my goals and think about how my life trajectory as a whole is going.  What are my life goals?  What am I doing to accomplish them?  Am I closer to my goals than I was six months ago?  Should I be working toward new goals?  What common mistakes did I make through the past six months that I want to avoid?  I then write a documentwith my personal mission and goals for the next six months and skim it every week to constantly remind myself of what I want to be doing.  This process usually takes me three hours.

Yes, there will be an unlucky day where you do all four reviews and spend like six and a half hours reviewing your life at different levels.  Perhaps this is a bit much for people, but I've found tremendous benefit from it.  I've found that spending this day reviewing my life has saved me from not just days, but even months, of wasted time that doesn't accomplish what I really want to do.  Reviewing is another way of saving you time.

Additional Tips

Now I've given you all my main advice, but I have some additional tips if you want to keep reading.

Carefully form these habits over time.  This is a lot to do at once, so do it in stages.  Build the habit of writing things down first, and then slowly get the apps you like in place for ideas, events, and tasks.  After you have that down, spend the time necessary to get your email in order and implement the zones wherever possible.  Then begin to move into prioritizing your tasks with the Eisenhower Matrix.  After you have this down, begin planning your days in advance with timeboxes and start doing your reviews.  While you're building that habit, simultaneously start building up the Pomodoro habit, slowly approaching 25-5 over a few months.

Find a way to reliably stay on habit.  Don't make the common failure of sticking to something for a month or two and abandoning it.  Spend a lot of energy thinking through how you'll stay on habit and how you'll not be like all the other people who think they'll stay on habit then fail.  Make a bet with a friend, start up Beeminder, or create some other kind of commitment device.

Form the productivity mindset. I had a lot of trouble implementing this plan until I was able to think of myself as an important person who does important things and should personally value my time.  I had to really want to be productive before I could start being productive.  Success at this will follow from the right mindset.  It's time to start thinking of yourself as important.  If you can't fool yourself, maybe it's time to look at your goals and decide what goals would make you feel important and then do those goals instead.

Behold the power of routines. I find it a lot easier to exercise if I have a routine of "every other day, right after waking up" or "every other day, right before dinner".  Your routine can be built from here.  It's a lot easier to stick to timeboxes if they're regularly occurring.  Use a calendar and build yourself something nice.

Put everything in a particular place.  People lose a lot of time just hunting around for things.  Solve this by spending some time ahead of time organizing things in your life and getting them into particular places.  Then always make sure things return to their places.

Declutter your life.  You'll work better if you have less stuff to keep track of and less commitments to worry about.  Get rid of everything and delegate anything you can.

Make a productivity place. This works especially well in colleges where there is a large variety of places you could be working.  Find a place to work, set up your Pomodoros, and follow them to the letter.  Don't mess up.  Take your longer breaks somewhere else.  If you do mess up, find a new productivity place and start again.  I found this really helpful for my mindset, but others have found it silly.

Don't neglect friends and family.  This is a big one.  Remember, the goal of being more productive is to free time to do the things you want and be with the people you want.  It's not to spend 100 hour workweeks neglecting those who are important to you.  Make sure to take some time off to spend with friends and family.  Schedule it in your calendar if you have to.  This will matter most in the long-run for your life.

Productivity ≠ Busy and Busy ≠ Productivity.  If you do productivity right, you shouldn't feel busy all that often.  Being busy is a sign of having poor productivity and/or having taken on too many commitments, and is rarely ever a sign of doing things correctly.

Conclusion

These tips are really a result of me experimenting for eight months.  I'd expect you to take a similar amount of time to go from zero to productive and end up with different systems that work for you and your environment.  But I think there are a lot of power in these systems and I'm interested to see what other people do and how other people run with them.  After all, they work for me.

Further reading:

* The Secret Weapon

* David Allen's Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

* Scott Young's The Little Book of Productivity

* Paul Christiano's Workflow

* 10 Step Anti-Procrostination Checklist

* Zenhabits

-

(Also cross-posted on my blog.)