Category: Articles

Building a productivity blog has been hard, and the level of discipline required has been beyond anything I’ve done before. There are days that I am tired and I just want to watch TV or look at social media, but in order to meet my timelines I have to stay true to myself and perform even when I don’t want to. 

Frameworks will vary from person to person based on their schedule, for example for me as a working dad raising two daughters, I have to set up blocks in a time to do creative work. 

These are the 5 elements to establish a good framework:

1. Consistency: Pick a time, pick a place and do the same activity religiously: Think of brushing your teeth, even if you miss a day at your usual time, look for another time to make it up. 
2. Energy renewal: Whether it is meditation, going out on a walk or playing the piano. You need to find a way to keep your energy levels high, without it you will lose focus and concentration, which will make it very difficult to get anything done. 
3. Relevant: I always wanted to build websites as a side gig, but never found the time to build the skill necessary to do it. Now I am spending my time on productivity; because the impact will be immediate. 
4. Prioritize: The work that makes us grow is difficult and requires a lot of hard thinking. Make sure you are prioritizing this work everyday otherwise you will not be making much progress towards your goal. 
5. Schedule it: Everyone has ideas but very few people have the drive to implement them, the first step at getting things done is by putting time on a calendar and being strict at doing what you put you were going to do. 

Example of using the 5 Elements:

Goal: I want to learn to play the piano. 

1. Consistency: Everyday I will practice the piano. 
2. Energy Levels: Every day I will walk/exercise for a combined 1hr.
3. Relevant: Everyday I will remind myself that learning to play the piano will help decrease my anxiety levels and increase my focus.
4. Prioritize: I will make sure to depriotize all tasks that are not helping me with my future goal so that I can have time to practice the piano. 
5. I will make sure to schedule practice time on a daily basis at least 30 mins in the morning and 30 mins at night. 

Tips on prioritization: 

1. I watched a quick YouTube video by Yancey Strickler on how to prioritize what you should be doing now to help your future become a reality. The bento box, explaining four quadrants that can help you create your to dos. The other method is the more popular Eisenhower matrix that separates tasks into urgent and important. Please take the time to look these up to learn more about the process.

Final Thoughts:

Without having a good framework to plan your day and complete your tasks, you will struggle to get things done. In this day and age the distractions are endless and we have accustomed ourselves to be very excited by receiving high doses of dopamine levels. In order to be able to achieve  your goals, you need to be able to follow a framework.

When I was younger and I literally had all the time in the world to do whatever I wanted, I couldn’t find the motivation. Ever since I’ve been dating someone and now married with children I barely have time to go to the bathroom yet, I’ve accomplished more in a day than what it would take me weeks if not months to do when I was single and with a job that didn’t have a lot of responsibilities. 

There are many forms to set goals:  for a team, an individual or even a system. In the article below I will walk through what each of the framework is and when it is best to use.

Definition:

OKRs: Objective and Key Results. 

• Objectives need to be ambitious, and feel a bit uncomfortable.
  • E.g: Ship a full feature, create a new customer flow 
• Key results are measurable and should be graded based on their completion. Google uses a scale from 0-1.0
  • E.g: ship API Y by June 7th, Increase hires by X 
  • The sweet spot usually .70 anything more be categorized as sandbagging too easy, less would be the goal was too difficult.
• Why use this framework?  Enables teams and individuals to set ambitious goals. OKRs if followed properly allow for people to attain what they thought they could not. 

SMART Goals: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time based.

• Specific: For example, “I want to learn to play basic piano songs”, “I want to lose 20 pounds” and “ I want to finish a ½ marathon”.
• Measurable: You need to be able to select indicators that can be measurable.
  • In our Piano example we can use treble clef proficiency, for the weight example you can weigh yourself daily or weekly and lastly for running, you can measure how far you are able to run. 
• Achievable: If you have never run any race of any kind then trying to finish a half marathon, can be too much.
  • Beginning with a 5K and going up from that distance becomes more attainable. 
• Relevant:  Deals a little bit of where you are in life.
  • Perhaps you want to run, to lose weight in order to attend an upcoming wedding. 
• Time based: a timeline of when you are expected to complete 
• Why use this framework? While more work than the previous OKRs, more information is provided here. Leaders sometimes don’t want people to sale themselves short, many organizations just want to be able to obtain consistent output from employees.

KPIs – Key Performance Indicators 

• KPIs are considered legacy in many places,  as  teams have transitioned  to OKRs or goals. However there are companies, and leadership teams that use KPIs to determine the health of the business. Some examples are “ Revenue per customer”, “ Average cost for feature launch”, “Average cost of new hire”

SLIs & SLOs- Service Line Indicators, and Service Line Objective”

• I won’t dive in too much here, as these are used for systems performance and expectations. But what you need to know is that teams are usually not measured using this methodology,

What’s the point?

Framework creates a route in a map to help you achieve your goals. It narrows the path for you to see the steps required to get to the finish line. In my opinion, pick whichever framework you feel fit your situation,  don’t get stuck with one or the other. 

Once you have chosen your framework what is next? We all have great ideas, however what the majority of us lack is execution. It is difficult to stay motivated, especially at the beginning when  incentives are only internal motivations.  Find that

Questions of what is tactical? What is strategic? What makes a person tactical or strategic? Always loomed in my head and remained a mystery up until now. 

Definitions based on Merriam-Webster dictionary: 

• Strategic: Of great importance within an integrated whole or to a planned effect
• Tactical: Of tactics of or relating to small-scale actions serving a larger purpose

The strategic person:

• Has a future plan and goals to meet identified objectives 
• Uses data and trends to formulate decision 
• Able to see the future based on what is happening now, think of chess; if you move a piece think of the trigger it will have. 
• Knows their space limitations and opportunities 

The tactical person:

• Focuses on immediate needs 
• Cares more about operations and stability 
• Usually a subject matter expert in one area
• Usually has limited scope to what they can take on
• Usually stays within their limits 

Quick Summary on work styles: 

Tactical	Strategic
Reactive	Proactive
Event oriented	Goal oriented
Black and white	Gray, ambiguous

Delivery 

Tactical

• Delivers output instead of outcomes 
• Prioritize quantity over value 
• Considered to be an order, think the restaurant waiter. Usually operates without a Vision or a long term goal. 

Strategic

• Focuses on outcomes
• Works on planned tasks, tied to the vision and the team’s strategy 
• Pivots occasionally to maintain alignment to the main objective 

Bringing it together:

Every team and individual needs a combination of both tactical and strategic focus, the key is balance. You want to have goals and long term plans, but you also need the ability to execute and make consistent progress towards the finish line. Based on my personal view of high performance individuals and teams there is a 30% strategic and 70% tactical balance; however there are times where strategic work will consume the majority of your time, initially at the start of the new product or project. 

Every product needs a vision and a strategy to drive the teams forward. Metrics will be essential to your success.. In a fast paced environment, significant data needs to be immediately available. If you are not trending in the desired direction, then you need to plan what needs to change. If you are trending positively then you need to determine how to continue the trend.