Capturing, Configuring and Controlling Your Professional Life with Productivity Systems

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Capture, configure, control is about capturing and organizing obligations, making sense of them, and taking control of how you use your time. A productivity system relieves stress by ensuring tasks and obligations are not solely kept in the mind. It allows for intentional workload management and the ability to prioritize and make decisions about what to focus on. Productivity systems offer more than just optimization; they provide autonomy and options for different goals. These goals can include successfully juggling multiple important things, focusing on a single important task, minimizing work while maintaining financial stability, or achieving a reasonable work-life balance. The potential of productivity is often underestimated, but with a good productivity system in place, individuals can have more control over their professional lives and pursue their desired outcomes.

You can’t just turn a “work harder” or “relax” knob. Once you realize that productivity ideas can offer you great autonomy in shaping your life - however you decide to do that - your relationship with it becomes more nuanced and fruitful. Productivity can be understood as applying organization tools and deliberate processes to take back control of your obligations.

Below are the questions covered in today's episode (with their timestamps). Get your questions answered by Cal! Here’s the link: bit.ly/3U3sTvo

Video from today’s episode: youtube.com/calnewportmedia

Today’s Deep Question: Is productivity about optimization or autonomy? [6:06]

- Should I start a blog to prepare to write a book? [23:18]
- How do I recover from burn out? [30:11]
- How do I prioritize when I have too many interests? [35:15]
- Should I ditch my side hustle? [39:25]
- How do I convince my self-focused colleagues to participate in more efficient group systems? [43:24]

Something Interesting:

- The five books I read in February 2023 [53:24]

Links:

vice.com/en/article/akdyje/the-relentless-rise-of-the-productivity-influence
youtube.com/watch?v=YctcDlPixb8

Thanks to our Sponsors:

This episode is sponsored by Better Help: betterhelp.com/deepquestions
blinkist.com/deep
expressvpn.com/deep
ladderlife.com/deep

Thanks to Jesse Miller for production, Jay Kerstens for the intro music, and Mark Miles for mastering.