In the past several years I’ve been reading, practicing, failing and trying again on several productivity methods. I’ve examined hundreds of books and articles looking for the best way to use my time.

In these years I’ve learnt two things. The first one is that 99% of what we know about productivity is wrong, and the second one is that it’s much easier to be productive rather than being a procrastinator when you know the real difference.

Everything you know about productivity is wrong

Let me start with a provocative statement: everything you know about productivity is wrong, or at least that’s true for the majority of us. Don’t believe me? Ask yourself the following question: “Do I have enough time in a day to do whatever I want?”. If you answered no, then there’s something wrong with your productivity system, isn’t it?

What does productivity means for you? For me productivity is the art of achieving more results in less time. I would like you to take notice about the “less time” thing. If you spend 80 hours a week working on something, then you’re not being productive based on this definition.

You may have a different opinion about productivity, and that’s fine as long as it works for you. Just be honest with yourself and think about it when you feel like you don’t have enough time in a day to do whatever you want.

The secret of productivity: doing less

The first myth that a lot of people have about productivity is that being productive means being able to do more things. In reality the most productive persons are those who can eliminate all the things that are not important in their life and focus instead on what they really want to do, which depending on your situation could mean traveling, spending time with your kids, working on a personal project, and so on.

Parkinson’s Law and the Pareto Principle are the real deal

So how can you achieve more by dong less? The secret lies in two principles which you’ve probably already heard about. One is called the Pareto Principle and the other one is called Parkinson’t Law.

The Pareto Principle, also known as the 80/20 rule, states that 80% of your efforts comes from 20% of your actions, which means that if you concentrate on those 20% of activities that provide the most results, you’ll get more results in less time. You can read more about the Pareto Principle by visiting its wikipedia page.

The Parkinson’s Law states that we spend all the time that we have available in order to complete a task. That means that if you have 24 hours for completing a task, you’ll indeed spend 24 hours on it, but if you have one week for completing the same time, you’ll probably spend the whole week working on it.

By focusing on the most important activities and setting very short deadlines, you can accomplish most of your goals in a very short amount of time. This is, in my opinion, the most important thing you need to know about productivity.

The experiment

Even though I’ve already incorporated the previous principles into my lifestyle, I still feel like I could improve a lot. Here’s what I want to do in the next 30 days to maximize my productivity:

  • Reduce the time spent at the computer. My goal is to spend a maximum of 10 hours per day on week days (8 of normal work and 2 for other activities).
  • No computer at all on saturday.
  • A maximum of 4 hours of computer on sunday.
  • Always have a deadline for every task I do, unless it’s trivial.
  • 30 Minutes of analysis per day, where I analyze the work I did and I look for better way to reach my results faster.

The reason I want to spend less time in front of a computer is that it provides too much distractions. I’d rather outline an article on a piece of paper instead of using a computer screen.

I’ll write more about this experiment and about productivity in general in the next days. For now I invite you to look at some areas of your life and ask yourself: “What are the 20% of the activities that I do that provide the most results?”