Day 504 - One Big Thing per day - https://golifelog.com/posts/one-big-thing-per-day-1652928602841
I guess I’m a bit of a productivity nerd. All along, I’ve been optimising my productivity for efficiency. That means trying to do as more per day, squeezing as many tasks as I can, checking off the to-do list.
A good day is when all the items on the list gets struck through.
But I think I’ve been doing it wrong.
Here’s what @ShaanVP has to say in his 5 tweet Tuesday newsletter:
"My system is called One Big Thing (OBT). Here lemme explain it to ya in 2 seconds:
• What’s the one outcome you need to make happen today?
• It’s not a task, it’s an OUTCOME (might require a few tasks)
• You put all your energy towards that
If you do that every day, you’ll outpace everyone. This is what productivity nerds get wrong. They go for efficiency (tasks per day). You want to go for effect (impact per day)"
Learning this was a face palm moment for me. But this isn’t some world-changing insight, isn’t it? Keeping the big picture, being strategic instead of tactical, the ends not the means – all common knowledge. But why did it still happen?
This is where the employee mindset is still so hard to unlearn. As employees, our roles are specialised or silo-ed, so performance is usually assessed on how many tasks we accomplished. Not the impact, not the outcome, because that’s belongs to everyone in the department/division/company.
So this is the real kicker: I’m still working like an employee for my own company. Not like an entrepreneur, the boss of my company. I created a job for myself, not a business. 😱
It kind of aligns to my learnings from my experiments in luck. I’m learning that I can’t just hunker down and work. I need idle time, free cognitive bandwidth to be able to flaneur and spot opportunities to be lucky. Spotting opportunities to leverage them is how one goes for impact, not efficiency. Just one good opportunity might be able to get me to my goal, whatever it may be – revenue, profit, impressions, likes. Tasks, how fast or efficient I complete them, how many I finish, has nothing on it.
Chase outcome, not output.
Seek impact, not efficiency.
Just One Big Thing a day. That’s it.
A good day is when all the items on the list gets struck through.
But I think I’ve been doing it wrong.
Here’s what @ShaanVP has to say in his 5 tweet Tuesday newsletter:
"My system is called One Big Thing (OBT). Here lemme explain it to ya in 2 seconds:
• What’s the one outcome you need to make happen today?
• It’s not a task, it’s an OUTCOME (might require a few tasks)
• You put all your energy towards that
If you do that every day, you’ll outpace everyone. This is what productivity nerds get wrong. They go for efficiency (tasks per day). You want to go for effect (impact per day)"
Learning this was a face palm moment for me. But this isn’t some world-changing insight, isn’t it? Keeping the big picture, being strategic instead of tactical, the ends not the means – all common knowledge. But why did it still happen?
This is where the employee mindset is still so hard to unlearn. As employees, our roles are specialised or silo-ed, so performance is usually assessed on how many tasks we accomplished. Not the impact, not the outcome, because that’s belongs to everyone in the department/division/company.
So this is the real kicker: I’m still working like an employee for my own company. Not like an entrepreneur, the boss of my company. I created a job for myself, not a business. 😱
It kind of aligns to my learnings from my experiments in luck. I’m learning that I can’t just hunker down and work. I need idle time, free cognitive bandwidth to be able to flaneur and spot opportunities to be lucky. Spotting opportunities to leverage them is how one goes for impact, not efficiency. Just one good opportunity might be able to get me to my goal, whatever it may be – revenue, profit, impressions, likes. Tasks, how fast or efficient I complete them, how many I finish, has nothing on it.
Chase outcome, not output.
Seek impact, not efficiency.
Just One Big Thing a day. That’s it.