Book Summary: Extreme Productivity

Success depends on a large part on mindset.
Focus the results you plan to achieve rather than the number of hours you work.
Results are what matter most to your employers, clients and colleagues
Personal productivity = quantity and quality of your results in achieving your own objectives
Actively carve out time to think as opposed to constantly reacting

How to rank Your personal Objectives
- What you want to do (Supply)
- What you are good at (Supply)
- What the world needs you for (Demand)
  - focus on economic fundamentals
  - be open to new developments
Time categories
- Career Aims (5+ years)
- Yearly objectives (3-24 months)
- Weekly targets (1 week or less)

Know what you are good at and go after targets from your position of strength
Set/write down goals and expected outcomes with explicit priorities. Be relentless about applying the 80/20 rule
Clearly define the hypothesis behind each goal
Tie long goals to actionable short term targets
- rank your targets
  - rank = who requested X implied importance
- Differentiate between
  - Enabling Targets: helps you accomplished your objectives
  - Assigned Targets: give to you

Goal management
- revise hypothesis as new data becomes available
Time management
- monitor where you are spending your time
- Project into the ideal future 365 days from now to visualize how your ideal time allocation will look like
- start calibrating your time allocation towards that ideal configuration
- address mis-alignment between goals and time allocation
Keep your ego in check
- unchecked ego results in misallocation of time and resources
- catch procrastination
  - is it to do with your fear of failure
Task execution
- figure out how to do the same items more efficiently
- figure out which tasks can be done in a quick-and-dirty way
- constantly seek to free up time for more important stuff
Good management system
- proactively achieving priorities
- avert crisis before it ever gets the chance to happen
Habits
- observe habits
- cultivate new habits to displace old ones
- avoid the narrative fallacy

Low priority task – only handle it once
- accepting imperfection
- avoid micro-management
- more so as you start moving up the ladder and need to delegate more
Incoming Requests
- decide promptly either to offer response or ignore it
- ignore 80% of all incoming requests
Avoid context switching
All appointments in one place
- purpose
- importance

Reading
- Know your purpose
- read fewer words
- Do in order: conclusion, beginning, middle
- Grasp the structure of the reading. scan materials quickly to get the gist. Only do deep dives if required
Writing
- know your audience
speaking
- know your audience
- make sure line of argument is crystal clear
- less information is more
- introduction, body and conclusion

Never delegate the recruitment of your own lieutenants
- make your own reference calls
Ability to lead multiple small teams in multiple large projects
Each employee needs their own space – autonomy
foster trust
- they need to trust you are working towards shared goals
maintain open line of communications
- be willing to listen
- spend more time listening than talking
establish accurate metrics
- establish priority of metrics
- there is academic literature on good versus a bad metric
Make sure your team knows you are offering suggestions not order
give effective feedback
- address behavior
- feeling humiliated causes decreased productivity

Content and style
agree what you should be doing
understand their preferences
elicit for feedback
Managing cautious managers
- talk them through your intended plan before executing