A good productivity system should allow you to focus on important, long-term work while minimising anxiety from the urgent short-term stuff and constant interruptions from your to-do list/ email/ chat etc.

Imagine a system that could manage all the short-term urgent stuff while at the same time, accelerating your progress towards your longer-term important goals.

A good productivity system should help you consistently achieve your big goals while keeping you on top of constant incoming requests and short-term deadlines.

Over the last decade I have developed a system that does just that – balances short-term urgent tasks with long-term important work, across all areas of your life.

The foundation of my productivity system is a combination of David Allen’s ‘Getting Things Done’, Cal Newport’s ‘Deep Work’ framework and Steven Covey’s ‘Rocks’ (Habit # 3 of the Seven Habits!).

Once the system is set up, it becomes easy to stay on top of all your incoming requests and commitments with minimal effort.

It comprises four core phases: Capture, Process, Plan, and Do. These four phases are seamlessly incorporated into a workflow using almost any popular productivity app. (I’ve personally set up my system using the free version of Asana.)

Phase 1 – Capture:

This is where you free your mind by capturing all tasks and thoughts that require your attention, no matter how trivial.

At this stage, you’re just transferring stuff from your mind to a temporary storage bin, so you can clear your mind to focus on difficult and important work.

It’s akin to a brainstorming session where you don’t judge or analyse – you simply dump everything into a holding space.

One of the biggest reasons we procrastinate on important work is that our minds are overwhelmed with irrelevant information. This is because we don’t have a trusted system to store or sort this information.

Phase 2 – Process:

There’s no point capturing thoughts and tasks in a system if you won’t be reviewing and possibly acting on these at some point. If your subconscious mind doesn’t trust your system, it won’t let these tasks go, keeping you stuck in a never-ending loop of anxiety and procrastination.

In this phase, you review the captured items and determine what to discard, defer, delegate, or act upon. This step helps you make sense of the chaos.

​The Nerd Productivity System is designed to make it extremely easy to decide what to do with each item, whether to work on it now, or park it for review later, with minimal cognitive load. This daily review doesn’t take more than five minutes and is enough to keep you in control and on track across a high volume of tasks and commitments.

Phase 3 – Plan:

Once you’ve made sense of the chaos, you prioritize and plan.

This is the part where you look at everything you’ve processed and shortlisted and decide 1) which are the important ‘needle moving’ tasks, a.k.a ‘Rocks‘, and 2) when you’ll be working on them.

This is the phase where the important stuff moves from your to-do list to your calendar.

Phase 4 – Do:

The “Do” phase is where the action happens, where you execute on your highest-priority items. This is where the magic of ‘Deep Work’ and ‘Flow’ help multiply your impact and output 3-5X.

These four phases are seamlessly incorporated into the Nerd Productivity System, in a way that capturing, processing and planning happen almost automatically and effortlessly, leaving your best hours to focus on actually getting shit done.

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A good productivity system should free you from being a slave to your to-do list and from working endless hours. Rather it should help you reclaim your focus, clarify your priorities, and achieve more in less time.