Reclaim your time and boost your productivity with five simple decisions that can transform how you work, learn, and focus on what truly matters

No matter what your personal or professional goals may be, here are five decisions that have had a huge impact on my effectiveness. By rethinking my phone habits, prioritizing learning, and tracking my progress, I’ve been able to reclaim my time and achieve greater success in both areas of my life. If you’re ready to enhance your productivity, sharpen your focus, and focus more on what truly matters, read on!

1. Stopped thinking of my phone as smart

During the iPhone's unveiling in 2007, Steve Jobs described the iPhone as a device that combines three products into one: "a widescreen iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary mobile phone, and a breakthrough internet communicator." Nothing in the unveiling of the iPhone mentioned spending hours and hours PER DAY on the endless number of apps that are engineered to grab our attention. When I say I stopped thinking of my phone as smart, I mean I think of my phone as a tool. It is excellent at sending and receiving texts and calls. Checking email is convenient and I don’t know how I’d navigate in the world without Google Maps, but I also think that the proverbial “we” should spend way less time on our phones. To this end, I don’t have any social media accounts on my phone (and haven’t for years). I have experimented with putting my phone in grayscale. Field notes: It accomplished the goal of using my phone less, but made it tricky to look at pictures, and my kids found it very confusing when they wanted to watch Blippi. I also track how much time I spend on my phone each day and have a goal to reduce phone time over time. What I’ve found is that when we pay attention to how much time we spend on our phones, minimize the time, and spend time on other things, it’s amazing how much more we can accomplish.

2. Library Account

Learning matters. At the risk of sounding too philosophical, isn’t all of life learning? No matter what we do, consume, or experience in life, we’re always learning. The best way to deliberately learn (rather than scrolling social media and learning whatever the algorithms throw at you), is to read. Even though books aren’t expensive, if you start reading a lot, the cost can add up. Enter the library: An unlimited number of books at your fingertips. Physical books, audiobooks, kindle books, and access to all kinds of other things (ie: music, magazine, movies, etc.). Getting a library card takes less than five minutes. Getting an account set-up has enabled me to read & listen to a steady stream of interesting, entertaining, educational, and inspiring books. Oh, and the best part about books from the library: If I get into a book that I’m not in love with, I don’t feel bad letting it go and moving onto the next one!

2a. Bought a (used) kindle paperwhite

I’ve tried the reading app on my phone, but reading on my phone doesn’t feel like reading. I don’t understand the magic behind the screen of the paperwhite, but it really does get close to feeling like you’re reading on paper. Plus, (free) library books can quickly and easily be read on the kindle. I read ~1 book per week on the kindle. I wouldn’t be able to read nearly as much if I didn’t have a library account with a kindle. The ROI of this decision can’t be understated… $80 kindle + $0 library account = Learning from ~1 book per week.

3. Daily summary/reporting

I think there’s a tremendous amount of truth to Simon Sinek's idea that: “Attention is like fertilizer; it makes things grow.” In the spirit of focusing on how I am spending my time and what I’m paying attention to, I take 5 minutes at the end of each day to summarize the day. The categories change over time. Some are meaningful (what I’m grateful for and what I did each day that was kind). Some are silly (I keep track of what we have for dinner to help with future meal planning). Some are tactical: I measure how my sleep was, if I ate healthy (scale from 1-10), if I ran, meditated, drank alcohol, and if I had caffeine. Some are experiments: I tried intermittent fasting, so I added a question to track the first and last meal of each day. You get the idea. It felt a little wonky at first, but now that I’ve been doing it for a couple years, it’s firmly become a habit and I’m amazed at how often I go into the database and look at previous responses. Overall, by maintaining attention on key areas over a long period of time, I’ve been able to make meaningful improvements in a number of areas in my life.

4. Used a notebook

You know the question: If your house was on fire and you could only grab a few things, what would you take? One of the top things on my list would be my notebooks. Bold? Perhaps. These notebooks hold all kinds of information. My reading list and learning from books, reflections on work, life, and my philosophy, my goals (and progress against those goals), business ideas, commitments I’ve made to myself, experiments (digital detox, gratitude journal, meditation/spiritual reflections, etc.), quotes and inspiration for how to be a better husband, Dad, friend, worker, etc. I fill up ~1 notebook per year and bring the current one with me everywhere I go. What started as a way to keep track of the books I read (in 2020) has turned into an important repository of all kinds of things. Also, I think back on my personal and professional growth that I’ve been able to think and work through since that time. I am sure I would have made progress without the notebooks, but I am convinced that the notebooks have played an outsized role.

5. Timeular

Have you heard of Timeular? It’s a small company based in Austria that sells a neat cube that allows you to track your time. Each of the 8 sides is customizable, and whatever you’re doing at work, you simply turn the tracker over and it counts how long you’re doing the activity. My timeular cube has a side for: meetings, deep work, shallow work, break, learning, exercise, etc. With this small piece of plastic, I am constantly thinking about how I am spending my time and making sure I am spending the time as well as possible. This is another one of these wild ROI decisions. I spent $70, four years ago, and have saved countless hours and spent many more hours on more productive activities

Conclusion

So, why does all of this matter? I can hear the question now: Hey Matt, these ideas only feel loosely related to my goal which is to get in, climb, or get out of corporate. Why are all of these things important? These things matter because while corporate goals are important, being more efficient with your time (tip 1 and 5), continuously learning (tip 2 and 2a), tracking progress (tip 3), and reflecting on where you’re going and why (tip 4), are the critical foundation for whatever your goals are in the corporate world.

If you found this useful, let me know! I’d love to hear from you! Also, if you think a friend would benefit from these ideas, please feel free to share.