Over the years I have constantly struggled to maintain a “productive” schedule. I tried post it notes, calendars, too-do list… pretty much any kind of productivity hack you can think of, all of which I had various degrees of success with. The main problem with all of these methods is that they would get complicated, and they don’t really show you a “big picture” of how you are doing. I recently came across a quote from Seinfeld about the method he used when he was early in his career, and he credits it with powering his success. Naturally this intrigued me since he is one of the most successful humans on the planet, so I set out to see how this method works for me.
The basic premise behind this method is very simple. Get a large calendar, hang it up on your wall in a place that you can easily see it. Then decide on 3-4 activities you want to do every day. If you do those activities, you get a big check mark for that day, if you don’t do those activities then you have to put a big ugly x mark on that day. I’ve been using this method for 5 months so far this year, and it has REALLY improved my life, and my overall productivity. The goals for each day are completely arbitrary, and will be different for everyone. My goals happen to be to wake up at an appropriate hour, to spend between 3-6 hours of “focused” working, and to get at least 45 minutes of exercise in. To get an idea of what kind of calendar you should use see my setup below:
