Getting Started Step 4

• Josh’s Crazy Productivity System Step 1
• Josh’s Crazy Productivity System Step 2
• Josh’s Crazy Productivity System Step 3

The last step is planning and setting aside time to work on your planned tasks avoiding stress-based prioritization.

You have tasks that occur on a repeated basis. Go into your calendar and block out time to work on these tasks. I call this your standard work. For instance, I have 45 minutes blocked out every day to plan my next day and clean out my inbox (I call this daily planning and loop closure). I also spend time in paper-based productivity which includes filling out a paper schedule for the following day with the work I plan to do (this is so I don’t set unrealistic expectations for what I hope to get done in the day and give myself plenty of breathing room to work).

Every Thursday I plan the one or two big projects I to make progress on during the following week and organize my calendar such as deciding what meetings I need to move or not attend.

Finally, I have two separate hours in the week that I schedule virtual office hours so that anybody can talk to me about items that are not urgent. This reduces meetings.

It took me years to build this system, I am still tweaking it, and it takes ongoing effort to keep from working on heat-of-the-moment items but I am less stressed and get a lot of important work done. If you want to try this system then start at step one and move on to the following steps as you integrate each step.