Productivity

Takeaway: The cognitive tasks you do throughout the day fall into four categories, depending on how complex they are: drudgery work, low-skilled work, high-skilled work, and a fourth category called superskilled work. Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes, 55s. Lately, like many people, I’ve been thinking about the technological changes happening, especially around AI. One way

On this episode, we chat about the pomodoro technique and how (and whether!) we use it in our own work. Topics covered include: What the “pomodoro technique” is; The rigidity of the technique; Whether 25 minutes of focus time is a good amount; The Resistance List; How the pomodoro technique fits with the idea of

On this episode, we chat about stimulation fasting. Topics covered include: What stimulation fasting is; Why an overstimulated mind can be counterproductive; “Altitudes” of mental stimulation; How to conduct a fast of your own; What Chris and Ardyn are fasting from right now. Links mentioned in this episode: You can listen (and subscribe) to the

This week’s podcast episode is a replay—a Golden Oldie from the vaults. Hope you enjoy! The original show notes are below. This week I interview Oliver Burkeman for the podcast. Oliver is the author of the fantastic new book, Four Thousand Weeks. In the episode, we have a fun, wide-ranging conversation about a bunch of

Written by Chris Bailey Chris Bailey has written hundreds of articles on the subject of productivity and is the author of three books: How to Calm Your Mind, Hyperfocus, and The Productivity Project. His books have been published in 35 languages. Chris writes about productivity on this site and speaks to organizations around the globe on how they can become

On this episode, we chat about multitasking—including where it does and doesn’t work. Topics covered include: The different levels of multitasking; Where multitasking does and doesn’t work; Why “conscious intervention” matters with multitasking; Why “attention residue” makes us less efficient as we multitask; The flip book effect; The cognitive costs of switching between tasks; How

Written by Chris Bailey Chris Bailey has written hundreds of articles on the subject of productivity and is the author of three books: How to Calm Your Mind, Hyperfocus, and The Productivity Project. His books have been published in 35 languages. Chris writes about productivity on this site and speaks to organizations around the globe on how they can become

This article is on the longer side, but I wrote it for those who won’t mind—and it’s extra skimmable if you do! Takeaway: Smartphones are the ultimate modern necessity—unfortunately! Five takeaways that I learned switching from a smartphone to a flip phone for a month: the more screen time we get, the worse our mental

On this episode, we chat about lessons learned from Chris’s experiment to switch to a flip phone for a month. Topics covered include: The impetus for the experiment; How smartphones are not meant to see switched away from; The phenomenon of zombiefication; The correlation between screen time and mental health; Reflecting on why the smartphone

On this episode, we chat about subscription overload—and which ones we think are worth the money. Topics covered include: The productivity apps we subscribe to; How basically everything is a subscription service; Opt-in versus opt-in commitments; How subscriptions have changed over time; Apps that take the subscription thing too far; How to do a subscription