5 Lessons that 10x my Productivity (from a 15 year old)
The best lessons that I've learned about productivity from watching self-improvement & business content.
I’ve been watching self-improvement content for almost 2 years now, and I’ve always heard of the concept of the “four-hour work week” and “getting everything done before the rest of your household wakes up in the morning”, however even though I constantly heard of all of these things, I’ve always found productivity as one of the most daunting challenges in my life.
I mean, I’m just a regular 15 year old who’s time and mental energy is being occupied by homework and other school responsibilities.
All I want to do is to work on creating projects and developing skills that will contribute towards my future goals, but my limited hours at home makes me not have enough time to deliberately work on creation.
However, from all the hours I’ve spent immersing myself with self-improvement, business, and productivity content, I was able to condense and implement the most valuable lessons I’ve learned from my favorite influencers and mentors.
In this issue, I’m going to share with you five lessons I’ve learned throughout my journey that is allowing me to balance school with self-improvement and creating my business (life’s work).
Lesson 1: 2-Hour Work Day
Here’s a question that genuinely changed the way I work: “If you could only work on a goal for up to 2 hours a day, what would you do?”
I love this question because it forced me to cut the fluff and bullshit and made me prioritize the most important task that will make progress towards my goal.
This is something I learned from Hamza Ahmed and he says that one of biggest things separating ‘successful’ people from people like us (who are trying to be successful), is that the rich prioritize tasks. People like me and you are doing whatever the fuck we want and hoping we make progress.
Whenever I’d come home from school to start “working on my business”, instead of actually working on making progress, I would spend my time doing useless tasks like looking for a new Notion template.
I often found myself opting to do something that felt productive, but isn’t producing anything.
Instead, I should’ve been doing the most important task that gets me closer to my goals, which is usually just doing the goal itself.
If my goals were to write better content and record better videos, my most important task would be to write content and record videos, not look for new Notion templates and writing frameworks.
Those things will come naturally as I collect data from doing my most important task.
Additionally, the 2-hour work day directly correlates with the next lesson…
Lesson 2: The Power Hour (no, not the drinking game)
One of my favorite things I’ve learned from Dan Koe, is to spend 1-2 hours of your day (preferably in the morning) doing what he calls the ‘Power Hour’.
This variation of the Power Hour is not about who can drink as much shots as they can, rather it’s an hour of deep, undistracted, focused work.
As mentioned earlier, this can be a good time to do your most important task because you want to be able to work in an environment with no distractions so you can enter a state of flow (more on flow in lesson 3).
The best times that I’ve found to do my Power Hours is 6-7AM where most of my family is still asleep, and 7-8PM before I go to sleep.
However, doing this in the morning is probably the perfect time to execute your power hour because this will most likely be time that none of your distractions will be awake.
Another added benefit of doing this early in the morning, is that you will be awake and working towards your goals while your competition is asleep.
Knowing that you just cranked out your most important and ambitious task before your competition wakes up is one of the best feeling. And I swear to you, this feeling gives me a slight testosterone boost.
Lesson 3: Flow State
Every time I would play video games, either by myself or with friends, I would always enter a state of flow where I started to merge with the game I was playing.
I had no irrelevant thoughts, nothing distracting me, I was just immersed with whatever I was doing in my game.
Sometimes it would be trying to go on a kill streak in Destiny 2, trying to execute a good ultimate in Overwatch 2, trying to clutch a 1v3 in Fortnite, or simply building a survival base in Minecraft— I had absolutely zero off-topic thoughts while playing video games.
Then it hit me, If I can get into a state of flow where I have zero distracting thoughts while playing video games, then I can get into that same state while working.
By limiting my distractions and immersing myself with my work, I instantly 10x my productive output because I was able to merge myself into the task at hand.
That is the real gift of human nature.
Lesson 4: Stop Multitasking
Every time I read a book, I used to take notes at the same time.
I’d get into a good flow of reading and when something caught my attention I’d shift my focus to my journal and make a couple of bullet points.
However, something that always happened to me when I transitioned from reading my book to writing down a note, is that I struggled to get back into a good flow of reading.
Every time I diverted my focus away from reading, it disrupted my attention and made me more vulnerable to distractions while working.
To combat this struggle of reading and taking notes simultaneously, I’ve been taking notes after I finished reading a section or chapter of my book.
Instead of taking notes at the same time while I was reading, I would just make a quick bookmark (in the form of a little star on the page) to notify myself that this particular section of the page caught my attention while reading it, and to go back to it later after I finished reading the section of the book.
This way, I don’t disrupt my flow and I’m able to stay in the ‘zone’ of reading while still being able to take notes.
This applies to every task that requires a lot of your attention and focus.
If it’s something like running while listening to a podcast, that’s fine, but something like doing homework then stopping to check your Instagram notifications, then going back to doing homework isn’t going to cut it.
Stop trying to juggle multiple things at once, focus on channeling your energy into completing one thing at a time.
Lesson 5: Use a Calendar
The Trident Method is something I learned from Ali Abdaal, and utilizing a calendar to plan out my day for maximum productivity is something that I’ve been trying to keep a stable habit.
Especially with school, AP classes, sports and other extracurriculars, managing my time is probably at its highest peak of importance in my life so far.
Being able create time blocks for specific tasks and events in my life is almost crucial in making sure I can stay on top of my shit.
Ali’s trident calendar system (where you plan out your ideal year, week and day) and also Dan Koe’s Power planner are two extremely impactful resources that I’ve been using recently to really optimize my life for maximum productivity and progress.
They allow me to plan out time blocks for my power hours, remind myself of important events and due dates, help me set big goals then break them down into smaller goals, and even helping me prioritize and find my most important task.
Even though using a calendar seems like a tedious task because you might not be able to follow it 100% (I used to think this as well), I've come to realize that a calendar is just there to serve as a framework of your ideal lifestyle that you can follow IF you can.
Even if it don’t follow your ideal day or week 100%, following it even as much as 15% is still substantial progress than if you were to go about your day mindlessly.
Conclusion
Well, there you have it. My 5 best pieces of advice I’ve learned about productivity that I’ve been using to balance everything important in my life.
2-hour work day
The Power Hour
Flow state
Stop multitasking
Use a calendar
But remember, — none of these lessons matter if you never take action.
You need to execute and implement the things you learn, acquire data from execution, then refine what works to create your own system/workflow overtime.
Start creating.