Category: Productivity

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The Importance of Responding in 24 Hours, but Not 1 Hour

In my business, I consider it very important to respond to emails within 24 hours. Sometimes this gets stretched out a little depending on when emails are sent, but I always respond within the next business day.

That’s important, and it is sufficient to make my clients feel like I’m on top of things, I’m responsive, and it’s also fast enough that I don’t miss out on things or have other major problems crop up because I didn’t address something soon enough.

I also do tend to scan email more frequently, and if there’s ever an emergency, I can deal with that right away, but it’s not usually a problem.

But what’s important to note is that it is absolutely not important to me to respond within 1 hour.

I think tons of people make it their goal to respond to things immediately, and it’s just entirely pointless.

Sure, it will impress some people, but it doesn’t typically provide very much additional value, and more importantly: in order to achieve it, you have to be willing to give up a ton.

The only people I know that do this are the ones who get notifications – often audio – every single time an email arrives.

In my opinion, nobody who is doing that could possibly be producing quality work. Just like a distracted partner scrolling through Instagram ever 3 minutes on a dinner date, they simply aren’t present enough to put serious thought into things and do a good job at anything other than responding to emails quickly.

So I think 24 hours, in this case, is the sweet spot.

But this makes me wonder: what else is like this? What are some things that people (or, more relevantly: I) do that that maybe take a lot of extra work and provide little additional value?

Are there any other notable areas where I may be well outside the sweet spot?

The answer has got to be “yes”.

Some categories could be:

  • When I’m working and/or available during the day (or week)
  • The level of detail in my communications
  • Pursuit of marketing opportunities
  • How much time I spend working on the business

And the list goes on.

Of these, it’s a bit of a mixed bag. I think I’m happy with my work hours. I’m available enough but still retain flexibility for other non-work opportunities.

I perhaps do communicate a bit too much, but I do almost everything via email and I can type really fast, so I don’t feel that it takes up that much of my time.

I’ve been slacking in marketing opportunities, for sure. Writing in this blog has essentially been all I’ve done. So that one is nowhere near the sweet spot.

Likewise, working on the business has probably been slacking a bit.

There are many things I’m aware of that I could and should be doing more with. But I think I’m more curious with this blog post to determine if there’s anything else I’m actually being too aggressive in.

Nothing comes to mind, unfortunately (fortunately?). But now I’m thinking about it, and if I figure something out, I’ll write about it.

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I Need to be Having Fun & Enjoying Life OR Working Hard to Maximize Income

I’ve been in the Los Cabos area of Mexico for over a week now, and a though crossed my mind as I was swimming in the ocean near where I’m staying.

I need to basically either be enjoying myself, trying new things, and taking advantage of everything my area has to offer, OR working as hard as I can to maximize my income at all times.

It doesn’t mean I have to pick one forever, just that I need to completely eliminate everything that’s not one of those two things.

Why?

This was the first time in 4 or 5 days that I actually swam in the ocean, despite it being extremely close. I’ve barely taken advantage of this place I’m in. Mostly because I’ve been working.

But I’ve wasted a lot of time, too.

When I’m working, I need to be working hard. And I need to constantly focus on how I can maximize the financial return for my time.

The reason for that is because I want to retire as soon as possible. The faster I can increase my net worth, the sooner I can retire and then it will be much easier to take advantage of everything around me.

And more to the point of this blog post: I need to eliminate things that are just a waste of time or that are just going through the motions.

I can’t be wasting time on things that aren’t important, and I can’t get complacent in my business and simply continue with the status quo.

I need to constantly be growing and expanding. I don’t want to work more hours, but I want to get way more out of the hours I do put in.

My goal is to retire by 50 but I would greatly prefer to do it much earlier, or at least be able to reduce my hours or increase flexibility before that.

Certainly I have improved in everything I’ve described here over the last several years and certainly the last decade. But I can’t get complacent with that. I need to continue improving, ideally at a more rapid pace.

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Finally Making Changes to Sleep Pattern

First of all, it is depressing to me that I haven’t posted since April 20th. A ton has happened since then and I’m a little sad that I haven’t had time to talk about any of it.

Anyway, I do have good news. I’ve made more progress in the last week to my sleep than I had in years.

Basically I started listening to the Huberman Lab podcast, and it has some excellent information and recommendations for improving sleep.

I’ve been getting up without my alarm the last few days and starting to sleep better. I’ve been up generally early and have been much more productive overall.

The key is to just tie in to a lot more physiological processes than I have been to help me develop a proper rhythm. Brute-forcing a habit hasn’t worked for me in the past and I think it’s mostly just because I didn’t understand the physiological processes that control a circadian rhythm.

So I started getting up early and actually going outside and exposing my self to the morning light, which helps set your clock for the day. Specifically, I haven’t been using my phone at all, and I’ve gone outside and hot tubbed for a bit first thing in the morning.

In addition to being great for the light reasons, it’s also just easier for me to get up and do something I enjoy vs. say, a strenuous run or something.

And then I’ve also made an effort to be outside for a bit around sunset, which also helps regulate your internal clock and circadian rhythm.

And then of course, I’m trying not to stay up too late. Falling asleep has still been a challenge but I feel like it’s getting easier every day as I fall into this new rhythm.

I’ve also been just generally much more productive, though that may literally be just because I’m getting up earlier.

I also have avoided news and entertainment sites (aren’t they the same thing at this point?) almost completely, which in turn has also made me much more calm and focused, and generally improved my mood.

All good things!

I’m really hoping I can continue all of this and just keep improving. The more I learn, the more I realize that my terrible sleep habits are likely causing lots of other problems in my life, or at the very least: preventing me from performing optimally.

So this is just one thing that’s going well, but I hope to continue improvement from here.

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Writing About Things I Need to do and then Forgetting About them is Still Just Procrastination

I have lots of great ideas in this blog. And most of my good ideas that I have end up here eventually.

But if I write about it here and then do absolutely nothing about it, what good does it do me?

This blog isn’t intended to be an idea graveyard. The goal is to actually enact change.

I think it’s tempting to write about something here just to feel good about myself, like I took the necessary step with it and accomplished something.

But if I don’t continue on to the next steps, then it’s not really very helpful.

This particular post doesn’t really have an actionable next step, it’s just something to be aware of in the future.

Writing and doing are not the same thing.

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I Seem to Have Lost Most of my Initiative Since the Pandemic Started

I had lots of great plans and initiatives going into the pandemic. You can see a lot of it just by reading my posts here.

But then, like most people, I was generally discouraged once the world grinded to a halt. I was distracted constantly by the news and the general anxiety of it all.

A lot of my initiatives fell to the wayside. Despite actually having much more time on my hands, I never seemed to be able to proceed with anything.

And I’m sad to say that initiative never really seemed to come back.

Sure, I’d like to grow my business and generally do things to improve. But I’m not doing it. I feel like I’m not really doing anything at all.

So what is it? What happened?

Was it just literally that the weight of the pandemic was enough to crush my spirit permanently?

I have a hard time believing that.

It’s understandable that I would be distracted and lose sight of things for a time. I think that happened to everyone.

But over time, I suspect I just fell into some bad habits. And I need to fix them.

Perhaps a good fix would be to avoid all news sources for a while. Perhaps disconnecting and having a reset would be great for me.

And I should try to do a lot of self-reflecting to figure out what it is and how I want to proceed.

I’ll try to circle back on this topic in a couple weeks and see if I have any progress.

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I Need to Eliminate or Heavily Throttle Harmful Distractions

I’ve decided that I need to completely eliminate harmful distractions like Imgur, aimless news scrolling, and mindless YouTubing.

When I engage in these activities, I just turn into a zombie. I keep going and going and it sucks all of my energy out, preventing me from getting anything else done.

I think this is what happens to most people when they use Instagram, TikTok, and other similar apps.

It just constantly hits you with dopamine until you’re completely immune to it. You can’t muster the energy to get anything useful done.

And for what? Is there any real value?

For the most part, I’d argue, “no”. It’s just a huge waste of time and life.

On days when I’ve done a lot of it, I get nothing done. On days when I don’t, I get a lot done and also feel much better.

That’s really all there is to it!

So as of now, I want to severely limit all of it, especially during the work day. I can still look at the news but I need to limit it to once or twice per day.

With that, I should be much more productive and happier.

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Lots of Things are Easy to Do After Sufficient Time is Spent on Them – But It’s Still Impressive that Someone Did It

I’m not sure how I can express that any more succinctly in the title, but here is what I mean.

For a long time, I always sort of wrote off certain video games because, “all you have to do is spend a bunch of time on it and you’ll beat everyone else”.

Generally, I was referring to MMORPGs where you literally just spend time and level-up. Once you’re at a sufficient level, you’ll be unstoppable except by others of a similar level.

Instead, I preferred games that reset every time. Where your past progress didn’t matter: only your current skill.

But what’s the difference?

If you spend time on anything, you’ll get better. Sure, some people might have pre-existing skills, or a better mindset that allows them to advance faster, but at the end of the day: the more time you spend on something, the better you get.

Period.

Not only that, but there are lots of things that essentially anyone can achieve, if they only spend the requisite time.

For example, learning a language. There’s really no big secret about it. If you spend enough time practicing, you’ll learn how to speak a language.

Again, some people might learn slightly faster, but nobody ever became proficient at a language without putting in a great deal of time.

In the past, maybe I was dismissive of things that simply required time because I believed in the erroneous idea of “innate talent” or simply the superiority of an individual, in all ways. Which are both just stupid.

“Natural talent” has been proven to be almost entirely a myth. Sure, to be a star athlete, you might need to be born with the right body type. But I guarantee you all of those super “athletic” individuals spent a ton of time to become skilled in those areas. Nobody is born knowing how to throw a perfect spiral.

To a large extent, any skill or talent is simply the accumulation of the time put into it.

And it’s only now that I’m realizing: that’s not any reason to dismiss it or to find it any less impressive.

Sure, anyone could achieve advanced proficiency in a language if they spent 1000-2000 hours practicing in it. So what’s the difference between someone who learned another language and someone who didn’t?

They actually did it.

They had the dedication, the perseverance, and the resolve to continue doing something that’s difficult until they mastered it. And that is impressive.

So ultimately, the most impressive thing about a person may not be their abilities or talents at all.

It may simply be their dedication to learning and improvement.

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I’ve Been Using News as Entertainment

Overall, I’ve been quite successful in wiping out the vast majority of mindless entertainment that I used to consume. And with it, I’ve found that I have much more energy (and time) to be productive and also focus on things that I actually care about.

But one of the remaining forms is maybe a little surprising: the news.

When I’m bored and need a distraction, I just go to Google News and scroll through and pick a couple articles to read. It seems like a good thing, right? Keeping up-to-date on what’s happening in the world.

I think there are two problems with this:

  1. I’m using it just to distract myself and to be entertained (also way too frequently)
  2. I would argue it’s a terrible way to truly learn about the world and current events in a meaningful, impactful way

I could go on about the second point for ages and probably will (or have?) at some point, but the first point is still equally relevant and the moment. I’m not going to the news in order to fulfill a need to be informed: I’m going to be entertained.

And that’s the problem.

I think it’s a huge problem that we all have this need to be constantly entertained now, and I want to be very intentional about how I spend my time and especially how I consume entertainment.

This is not an important one to me, and I need to start taking measures to ensure I don’t do this anymore.

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Emails Give Me a Nice Hit of Dopamine

I feel like I’ve been talking a lot about dopamine lately, but a thought I recently had was that going through emails seems to give me a nice hit of it.

Or, possibly more accurately: thinking about doing emails gives me the dopamine, and each time I move on to a new one, I get a little more.

And that’s part of why it has been one of the bedrocks of my productivity, I think. It’s not that hard for “going through emails” to compete with “messing around on my phone” because it triggers a similar neural pathway. Or something, I don’t know, I’m not a brain scientist.

I’ve discussed here in the past how my email habits are actually some of the most useful and consistent that I’ve developed. It does wonders for my productivity. I’m able to just blast through all emails without really needing any “willpower,” and it really isn’t very cognitively demanding.

I’m not totally sure why that is. Could it be that all established habits provide these same benefits?

Honestly, a life where I do everything productive with minimal effort and can coast through on “auto-pilot” for the difficult things sounds pretty good.

I guess I need to really start focusing on habits again in order to test this theory.

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Am I Mentally Lazy?

I feel like I almost never use all of my brain power.

At any given moment, it seems like I’m only 20% committed mentally to whatever it is I’m doing. As a result, I think that things tend to be done poorly or very slowly.

Take, for instance, my flashcard studying. I study a huge variety of topics via flashcards everyday, most notably (and most time-consumingly) Spanish vocabulary.

On a typical day, it’s a grind. I can barely focus, and it feels like I’m not activating my whole brain to be able to recall words and their meanings.

I know that I’m not using everything because every so often, I will be fully committed. I’ll just feel like I’m totally dialed-in, and I’m remembering everything perfectly and it just flies by.

But that’s not the norm.

And it applies to other areas, too.

Whether I’m working, or playing the guitar, or even writing a blog post, it sort of feels like I’m just barely there all the time.

Now, I’ve discussed in multiple blog posts (here and here; both private, sorry everyone else!) how I tend to hoard my attention span and use it very selectively. I think this is sort of the same thing.

Using brain power is exhausting, and it may be quite limited. So maybe I just hoard it all the time and that’s all that’s happening.

But I don’t think that’s the full story.

I’m pretty sure dopamine plays a big role. Try as I might, I often find myself constantly giving in to some form of technology addiction. Recently it has been YouTube videos and shorts.

It’s well-documented that these types of things (including and especially Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and others) give you constant hits of dopamine. While the amount of dopamine in your brain doesn’t necessarily change, your sensitivity to it does.

And if dopamine is no longer effectively getting me to do things or concentrate, the end result will be that I never fully can.

I also have more evidence about this in my own life. I recently spent 8 days hiking in Patagonia, and during that time I didn’t have any internet access. No internet meant no social media or mindless distractions.

And by the end of it, I was amazed at a number of things. One was that hearing music or other forms of entertainment was mesmerizing. It immediately captured my attention and I loved it.

And overall I definitely feel like I could concentrate better and generally felt better.

So that’s all the evidence I really need. I need to focus hard on avoiding all forms of mindless distractions and will see where that gets me.

To start, I’m removing the shortcut to YouTube from my phone.