This is optimal leaving daily dangerous ideas. What if everything we thought was true about productivity was wrong by Cal Newport of Cal Newport dot com and I'm just a molic. I'm gonna jump right into today's post as we optimize your life Dangerous ideas. What if everything we thought was true about productivity was wrong by Cal Newport of Cal Newport dot com The surprising hardness of the symbol I just observed something distressing about my behavior The absolute most simple component to my productivity repertoire is to keep a notebook and a pen within reach at all times in the standard GTD cannon This allows me to immediately capture any tasks or ideas that pop to mind in theory This basic behavior taking a notebook out of my backpack when I sit down should present no difficulty What task to be more simple all I have to do is move my arm literally just a few feet from my bag to my desk No thinking is required.
No more than three to five seconds transpire. No sweat many times However, I can't stand the thought of it in fact as I write this such an occasion just occurred I returned to my office after lunch sat down and found that every ounce of my being was resisting this trivial act I had to fight to rally the energy to get out that notebook and this is a fight I often lose the problem with the hardness assumption This observation contradicts a lot of what we assume about productivity We like to imagine that the difficulty of starting something is in linear proportion to the difficulty of a task When we see right-turn paper on a to-do list We know that we have our work cut out for us to overcome the urge to procrastinate Something simple on the other hand like take a notebook out of your backpack should be a breeze But it's not to my continual consternation the simple and hard at times can be equally difficult to get Started and this causes trouble the core of most modern workflow management systems depend on the use of easy habits to support and simplify the hard If these great-aided designations fail so does perhaps many of the claimed benefits of these systems Toward a more realistic theory of motivation. The obvious question remains. What does explain our varying motivation levels?
I don't really know but it's likely quite complicated one thing I have noticed however is that I tend to move between grooves and slumps when I'm in a groove on a certain type of work It's relatively painless to switch between tasks within this same type For example, if I'm in a blog groove It's easy to knock off tasks related to the blog This is similar to me hi chicks and me highs flow state, but not quite the same in a groove You're able to move between many different tasks within a broad type Whereas flow typically refers to your concentration during a specific activity the slump is the evil twin to the groove It describes a general period of low energy where anything beyond desultory email checking seems impossibly distant What's key is that in both situations the hardness of the task at hand plays a minimal role in determining my motivation To tackle it the key is not only that I'm not in a slump But also that I'm in the right groove for the type of work I face the important questions if this general model holds universally It makes some interesting questions for example. How do you avoid slumps? How do you jump from a slump to a groove? How do you know what groove you are in is it possible to jump from one group to another?
Do we have any control over what grooves? We land in and if not does it hold that the optimal workflow is one in which you learn to identify and then extract the maximum amount of work Out of whatever groove you happen to be in from control to accommodation I'm fascinated by these questions, but I have no real answers It seems that the general paradigm shift at play here is one away from rigid control over your entire work day and toward one Where you acknowledge a big part of your motivation is out of your control And the best you can do is be aware and leverage what you face each day for future reading There are no doubt relevant lessons in chicks and me high There's probably also a lot to be learned from Jim lore and Tony Schwartz's work on energy management I leave a more rigorous examination of these issues as future work for now However, as I sit and ponder the notebook that sits beside me in the Herculean struggle that preceded It's arrival in this position. I can't help but feel a slight shiver of discomfort Maybe the whole productivity game is much more elusive and much more non-deterministic than we would like to believe You just listen to the post titled dangerous ideas. What if everything we thought was true about productivity was wrong by Cal Newport of Cal Newport calm I'll be right back with my commentary This episode is brought to you by Samsung Canada You work on your phone all day, but it's your phone working for you Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra is the AI phone built to help businesses So teams can move smarter and get more done with built-in privacy display security from the chip-up and battery for busy schedules Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra works as hard as you do visit Samsung comms slash business to learn more I'm constantly thinking about how to optimize my health What supplements to take hours of sleep what my diet should focus on super power finally takes the guessing out of it One simple lab test covers over 100 biomarkers in their app gives you a complete picture of your heart liver hormones Metabolism even environmental toxins plus it used to cost $499 right now It's just one hundred ninety nine dollars and head to super power calm and use code old at checkout for an additional twenty dollars off your membership Take it a Cal you might come out of this thinking what this post says I have no answers So what's to take away here?
I really think it's important to simply know or be aware of what state you're in awareness I think plays a huge factor in our overall happiness and acceptance of life after tracking my daily mood for six months personally This is becoming more and more clear to me even when circumstances are amazing and I can't quote-unquote complain It's not sustainable to consistently have days that are like an eight out of ten And again, that's even when things are great life. Just doesn't work that way There always will be those slumps that he talked about they're not easy to get out of and simply knowing what state we're in Can change that from like a two out of ten day to like a five we can say to ourselves That's one of those days and simply not expect to finish everything on our to-do list that day Which is totally fine by the way and of course we're talking moderation because if we say that every day for months or years Then that's a bigger problem to be addressed But day to day if we can be aware of our current state or even season of life Well, then that's a good place to be so something to think about this week Thank you for listening. Have a great rest of your day, and I'll see you tomorrow where you're optimal life awaits