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Bridge to the future, Photo by fotopakismo

I found out recently that I’d be particularly at risk if my group were to have layoffs (still unlikely). In order to mitigate some of this risk, in terms of getting rave reviews for people inside and outside the company. I propose to increase my productivity by 5x in the next 3 months. It sounds ridiculous, I know. I might as well say I want to become a kajillion times more productive than I am now, but I firmly believe it’s achievable. I actually am shooting to surpass it.

I have fairly selfish goals involved in this. First off, I want to see if I can do it, since it affects my entire life and personal success. How amazing would it be to get so much done during a day? Would that free up time to allow me to do whatever it is that I’ve been putting off, such as vacationing, or side projects?

Secondly, I can see myself becoming a productivity expert, using myself as the case study. For full disclosure, I have this crazy image of myself consulting with other groups, and being a guest speaker who receives the adoration of thousands of people whose quality of life I improve. Obviously this is an unlikely scenario, but it’s still motivating.

One major factor of productivity is delivering useful objectives, not only completing work or appearing busy. It’s time to make the challenging decisions that I would be putting off for later, not doing work for work’s sake.

Getting to brass tacks:
Velocity is the degree of difficulty for a completed task. Points are estimated as hours to complete a story which directly meets program objectives, from 0-3. Any larger is difficult to manage. Chores and bug fixes for my code do not count towards velocity, since they don’t meet program objectives.

I’m going to aim for at least a 5x velocity increase in three months. I chose 4 habits to starting the Friday before last, and can add 1 habit per week, on Friday. At the end of the experiment, I keep at least 8 habits. Typically it’s possible to start habit change at about 1 habit a week, so this is agressive.

Part of the current challenge is relating velocity to real work done. I’m wondering if I need to relate velocity to the same complexity, not estimated time. Eg: A 3 star story currently takes me 3 hours, should it later? Or should it be a 1 star story if the complexity is the same and I’m 3 times as productive?

My current useful habits:
Arrive by 9:30 AM (consistent in the last two weeks)
Reading on the bus
List three most important tasks at the start of the day
Drinking up to 3 Liters of water a day
Bi-monthly journaling and men’s group

First 4 habits:
1. Use headphones only for music, at most 2 hours a day, lock them up otherwise
2. Start tracking velocities and stories, and add daily productivity notes into the file on specific tasks
3. Use internet only around noon for up to half an hour, unless absolutely needed to complete a task. E-mail may be checked when arriving as well as during noon.
4. Read books useful for work on the bus (currently a C book)

Pool of possible habits to add, some of these may seem off the wall:
1. Eat only whole foods, excepting protein powder
2. Set up weekly meetings with superiors tracking what I’m learning and how, relate it to program goals
3. Weekly read of productivity blogs such as Zen Habits (using RSS of course) for ideas of what to add
4. Daily meditation, including visualization of best positive (possibly long term) outcomes relating to specific important tasks.
5. Complete media fast for a week every month: 1 hour of fiction per day, and 1 non fiction book, MAX
6. Select habits from Getting Things Done (eg: 43 folders (tickler file); workflow process: collect, process, organize, review, do; levels of focus: current actions, current projects, areas of responsibility, yearly goals, 5 years, life goals)
7. Work virtually so that I have a distraction free environment, and get a change of environment to avoid burnout
8. Nicely correct people who distract me from work
9. Keep a daily journal, relating to productivity, habits, and life goals. Question myself: “Did I work hard?”, “Did I work smart?”
10. Exercise 4 times a week for 45 minutes
11. Single task for an hour at a time, including a 5 minute break. Avoid multi tasking and context switching wherever possible.
12. Keep desk decluttered, spend 15 minutes a week on this
13. Declutter house for 15 minutes a day
14. Stick to 5 sentence limit for e-mails
15. Use a program like RescueTime to track how I use my computer
16. Eat 5 small meals a day, have a free day where I eat whatever
17. Skip meetings when possible and get a review later, or do other work during meetings (this is extreme, but often meetings produce very little real work product)
18. Blog weekly (or more) about the experience and get outside feedback

From last Friday:

So far, the main challenge of this task to limit interrupting web surfing. Even a few minutes of it causes a costly context switch. I’m picking a habit here which will make it catalyze my other habits. I’m choosing: Daily meditation, including visualization of best positive (possibly long term) outcomes relating to specific important tasks.
I’ll meditate for 15 minutes a day, either after waking up or before going to bed.

Tags: productivity