I switched to Firefox recently, which has a “Recommended by Pocket” section on the New Tab page. As I expected, many of the recommendations are productivity fetish articles from Lifehacker and similar rubbish. Their job is not to make you more productive–whatever that means–it’s to keep you reading.
Instead:
- Discover what’s valuable. Talk to people with high visibility and the insight to match. That could be an executive, or it could be your spouse.
- Do only valuable things. Being busy doesn’t mean you’re doing anything worth doing.
- Learn your tools. If something feels like it’s harder than it should be, you’re using the wrong tool, or you don’t know your tools well enough.
If you follow these guidelines, you’ll be happier, less stressed, and deliver more value.