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Productivity

Productivity

“Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before.” — Franz Kafka

Welcome to Productivity on Sources of Insight!

Imagine the power of productivity at your fingertips to shape the life you desire, enhance your achievements, and foster a more fulfilling existence.

Productivity is the essence of unlocking your true potential.

I’ve spent over 20 years as a high-performance coach at Microsoft, guiding individuals, teams, and leaders to harness this power.

In my experience as a productivity expert, I’ve come to understand that productivity is more than just accomplishing tasks.   Productivity is about transforming your approach to time, energy, and focus to create remarkable outcomes and cultivate a more impactful life.

It’s the journey and the destination.

As I share insights from my experience, I’m excited to help you embrace productivity as your edge, enabling you to achieve more, lead effectively, and contribute meaningfully to the world around you.

Master the mindset, skillset, and toolset of better productivity.

Latest Productivity Articles

Here you can browse the latest articles based on most recently published:

Browse Latest Productivity Articles

What is Productivity?

Productivity is the strategic art of optimizing your time, energy, and resources to achieve better results and accomplish your goals efficiently and effectively.

Mastering your productivity ultimately leads to personal growth, satisfaction, and a greater impact in both your professional and personal spheres.

For more information, see What is Productivity?

Getting Started with Productivity

Getting Started with Agile Results — Anyone can practice and apply the skill of productivity.  Whether you view yourself as a productivity guru or simply someone who seeks to optimize their time and efforts, here’s a straightforward approach to kickstart your journey towards greater efficiency and impact.

For a deeper introduction, see Agile Results QuickStart.

The Ultimate Productivity Guide

The Productivity Guide — The is the ultimate guide to productivity to help you master your energy, your focus, your flow and your fulfillment.

Productivity Frameworks, Methods, and Models

This is a starter set of methods and models to help you master your productivity journey:

  • 30 Day Improvement Sprints
  • My Three Wins
  • Peaceful Calm – Achieve a Peaceful Calm State of Mind
  • Productivity is a Remarkably Good Thing
  • To Do, Doing, Done

Free Productivity Course

30 Days of Getting Results (Free) — 30 self-paced lessons that will help you get faster, better, easier results.

Best Books on Productivity

Best Productivity Books — This is my full list of the best productivity books of all time, based on what I’ve used to master productivity at work and learn productivity better, deeper, faster.

Here are some of the best productivity books of all time:

  • 18 Minutes by Peter Bregman
  • Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
  • Getting Results the Agile Way by J.D. Meier
  • Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen
  • The Productivity Project: Accomplishing More by Managing Your Time, Attention, and Energy by Chris Bailey

Best Quotes on Productivity

Best Productivity Quotes — This is my collection of the best productivity quotes that I’ve curated to inspire better productivity and better results.

Here are a few examples:

  • “Absorb what is useful, reject what is useless, add what is specifically your own.“ – Bruce Lee
  • “Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.” – Peter Drucker
  • “If you love life, don’t waste time, for time is what life is made up of.” – Bruce Lee
  • “Once you have mastered time, you will understand how true it is that most people overestimate what they can accomplish in a year – and underestimate what they can achieve in a decade!” – Tony Robbins
  • “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” – Voltaire
  • “Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort.” — Paul J. Meyer
  • “The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.” — Stephen Covey
  • “The simple act of paying positive attention to people has a great deal to do with productivity.” — Tom Peters
  • “Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.” — Stephen King
  • “The secret of getting ahead is getting started.” — Mark Twain

Productivity Checklists

Here are a few productivity checklists to help you master your time, energy, focus, and flow:

  • Focus Checklist
  • The Charge Checklist
  • Time Management Checklist

Articles by Topic

Browse productivity articles by topic:

General

  • 3 Outcomes for Today
  • Agile Results QuickStart
  • Be Effective, then Efficient
  • Get Unstuck
  • Just Start
  • Use Three Stories to Drive Your Day
  • Why Write Things Down?
  • Wrap Your Day Around Your Mission

Action

  • How To Do Tasks More Efficiently
  • Iterate More, Plan Less
  • Prioritize Your Day with MUST, SHOULD, COULD
  • Rituals for Results
  • Scrimmage Your Results Start with Something Simple
  • Starting is the Hardest Part
  • Quick and Thirty Getting Things Done

Focus

  • 101 Proven Practices for Improving Your Focus
  • Focus on the Wildly Important
  • Framing the Problem to Focus and Prioritize
  • How To Instantly Triple Your Focus and Get More Things Done
  • Life Frame: The 7 Life Categories for Work Life Effectiveness
  • Less is More, Slower is Better
  • Monday Vision – Use Three Stories to Drive Your Week
  • Shut Down, Compartmentalize, or Channelize

Goals

  • 10 Reasons that Stop You from Reaching Your Goals
  • Brian Tracy on the Best Times for Writing and Reviewing Your Goals
  • Goal Setting vs. Goal Planning
  • How Brian Tracy Sets Goals
  • How Dreams, Goals, and Habits Fit Together
  • How I Design My Year
  • How John Maxwell Sets Goals
  • How Tony Robbins Sets Goals
  • How Tony Robbins Transformed His Life with Goals
  • Knowledge Workers Must Focus on the Results
  • Productivity Objectives: Effectiveness Wins in the Long Run
  • The Power of Dreams
  • Vowing Doesn’t Work But Concrete Plans Do

Habits

  • 8 Steps for Building a Habit Stacking Routine
  • Innovate in Your Approach
  • Rituals for Results
  • The Power of Habit Stacking
  • Why Use Routines?

High Performance

  • 3 Keys to Peak Performance: Commitment, Completion, and Closure
  • 5 Choices of Extraordinary Productivity
  • 25 Keys to Getting Better Results
  • Add Creative Hours to Your Week
  • Add Power Hours to Your Week
  • Feedback: The Ultimate Key To High Performance
  • Find Your Arena for Your Best Results
  • Find Your Unique 20 Percent Spike
  • High-Performance Mode vs. Grind-It-Out Mode
  • How To Scale Yourself as a One-Man Band
  • Master Faster
  • Motivation, Skills, and Feedback
  • Multiply Your Productivity by 10,000 Times
  • SWAT Mode for Extreme Productivity
  • The 20 Percent Spike
  • The Power of Certainty
  • What is the Secret to Insane Productivity

Information Management

  • 10 Ways to Improve How You Manage Information
  • Dump Your Brain to Free Your Mind
  • How To Read 10,000 Words a Minute
  • Sweep It: How To Clean Up the Mess that Adds Up

Motivation / Energy

  • 4 Sources of Strength
  • Add Power Hours to Your Week
  • Catalysts and Drains: Get a Handle on Your Energy
  • Feel Strong All Week Long
  • How To Avoid Mental Burnout
  • Manage Energy, Not Time
  • Master Motivation: The Keys to Motivating Yourself and Finding Your Drive
  • Peaceful Calm – Achieve a Peaceful Calm State of Mind
  • Reduce Friction and Create Glide Paths for Your Day
  • Start Your Day Like Tony Robbins
  • The Seven Major Catalysts that Inspire Progress
  • Use Metaphors to Find Your Motivation
  • Why Do We Procrastinate?

Planning

  • Design Your Week with Skill
  • Monthly Planning with Agile Results
  • Vowing Doesn’t Work But Concrete Plans Do

Prioritizing

  • Prioritize Your Day with MUST, SHOULD, COULD
  • What’s Worth Doing Today?
  • Worst Things First

Productivity Personas

  • Productivity Personas
  • Productivity Personas – Are You a Starter or a Finisher?
  • Simplifiers vs. Optimizers
  • Supertaskers: How Some People Task-Switch Faster and How You Can Too
  • The Procrastinators, The Disengaged, The Distractors, and The Purposeful

Strengths

  • 4 Sources of Strength
  • Add Power Hours to Your Week
  • Design Your Week with Skill
  • Feel Strong All Week Long
  • How To Find Your Strengths
  • Outsource Your 80 Percent
  • The 20 Percent Spike

Task Management

  • 3 Steps to Crush Your Overwhelming List of Things To Do
  • How To Do Tasks More Efficiently
  • Let Things Slough Off
  • Prioritize Your Day with MUST, SHOULD, COULD
  • Shut Down, Compartmentalize, or Channelize
  • Start with Something Simple
  • Supertaskers: How Some People Task-Switch Faster and How You Can Too
  • To Do, Doing, Done
  • To-Do Lists are Great
  • Triage Your Action Items
  • Worst Things First

Time Management

  • 3 Keys to Effective Time Management
  • 7 Strategies for Better Time Management
  • Carve Out Time for What’s Important
  • Design Your Week with Skill
  • How To Use Timeboxing for Getting Results
  • Manage Energy, Not Time
  • The Starting Point of Time Management is Goals, Priorities, and Value
  • There is No Shortage of Time
  • Time is the Limiting Factor
  • Timebox Your Day for Better Results
  • Timeboxing, Rhythm, and Incremental Value

Work-Life Balance

  • Life Frame: The 7 Life Categories for Work Life Effectiveness
  • Setup Boundaries and Buffers
  • The Ultimate Work-Life Balance System is You

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JDI am J.D. Meier. Microsoft 25 years. Join me on a quest for the world's best insight and action for work and life. Learn more...

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