I’m the kind of person who wants to exploit as much juice as I can out of my life. And hence, I like to be productive and taking as much action as I can.
To that end, I’ve learned or developed mental models that allow me to save time and get more done on any given day. In this article, I want to share 4 of these with you.
#1: A Counterintuitive Way to Set Daily Goals
Let’s begin with goal-setting and why I advise against doing this in the usual way.
The usual way of setting daily goals: Deciding the quantity of work to be done
People usually set goals by deciding how much work they’ll get done in a day. Examples:
- “I’ll write this report today.”
- “I’ll write three chapters of my book today.”
- “I’ll study this chapter from my textbook today.”
However, there are a couple of problems with this approach.
- The quantity of work is fixed. So quality must be variable.
Consider this. If you tell yourself that you’re supposed to write a given report today, you’re fixing the amount of work that needs to be done. Hence, your goal becomes to complete the report at any cost. But what if writing a high-quality report actually takes over 10–15 hours? Something you cannot complete in a day? But you’re still determined to complete the report in a day? You will have no choice but to do that by compromising the quality of the report.