Planning Before You Do
How Good Frameworks Make Our Lives Easier [27]:
Before I give you advice on productivity, I need to share that I am an odd combination of an anxious worker and procrastinator. I procrastinate until I am palpably challenged by fear and cannot procrastinate anymore.
I am also divided when it comes to working style. On one hand, I am extremely organized - tracking daily to-do items, short to medium goals within a year, keeping tabs on every task in the moment to complete. On the other hand, I can be a mess when it comes to long term planning and have found it hard to plan out my life in this sense. As a consequence, even though I am composed and detail-oriented with immediate tasks, I can’t react the same with long term progress. That’s why I need to embark on a journey to ‘get my life together’ and set out to find the best frameworks and systems to manage everything.
After some self-reflection and researching, I learned that this phenomenon is due to two reasons: one because long term planning is so daunting and vague, second because I haven’t found a good structure to design it.
The past two months have seen me adding different engagements to my life aside from a full time job. I do side projects and part time job (like this newsletter), join events/webinar to learn new things, volunteer when I have the chance while trying to maintain an active routine. The first week on this schedule was tough. I was sleep-deprived, stressed out and felt like I had no time to play.
When push comes to shove, a solution is needed to move forward. I sit down and figure a plan that could potentially work. I learned that for me the best systems minimize mental energy required and maximize auto pilot mode, focus on the actual work instead of planning for it.
Truth is, the more time you need to switch between tasks, the less efficient you are going to be. You will lose out time and are more prone to burn out. This applies to everything from work to personal life and socializing.
For me, this works out as a consistent routine that hits all of my requirements: day job, side projects, health/fitness and fun time. I go into a routine that soon become memorable. For instance: weekdays are for focus work, Thursday night marks beginning of wind down and weekends are for fun and friends. I identify and map out the busiest days of the week for my day job and build everything around it. I draw a clear line between work and play, never letting work mixed with quality time with loved ones and dedicate my focus time on all work when needed. Three sets of tools that have also helped me prioritize and organize activities are Notion, Einsenhower Matrix and S.M.A.R.T goals.
![[Inline illustration] The four quadrants of the Eisenhower Matrix (infographic)](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6a47449b-191e-47c2-a156-c35524ec2759_1801x1847.jpeg "[Inline illustration] The four quadrants of the Eisenhower Matrix (infographic)")
That’s for the present. Good systems also work fantastically for planning ahead in that they help set the right expectations, goals and cadence for execution. I realize that with every experience, whether in a law class, my Supply Chain internship or a side project, good systems allow me to get on board quickly and maintain motivation from start to finish.
In my opinion, this is partly why corporations pay consulting companies millions of dollars to come in and ‘solve their problems’. It’s not because consultants can offer the most ingenious solution or has the most knowledge about their clients’ specific industry. It’s because these consulting companies have a track record of building reliable and easy to follow frameworks. They can set out systems for their client companies to based off to achieve their goals. I have seen first hand how management consulting works and still to this day, have nothing but admiration for the top consulting firms’ system organization.
To add credibility to the discussion, James Clear has one of the best quotes on building good systems:
“You do not rise to the level of your goals; you fall to the level of your systems”
Next time you are struggling with balancing priorities, spend some time to sit down and map out a solution: whether that is a better routine, an instant prioritization list or a full blown database to track goals in Notion.
Let me know if you are interested in a tactical breakdown of how I (still iterating) organize my life. Do share your favorite productivity tools in the comment below and I’ll see you next week!
I really want to love Notion but I've found that the learning curve is quite steep and spending hours watching tutorials feels like another item on my already too long to do list!