Free to Focus: A Total Productivity System to Achieve More by Doing Less

For real productivity, however, we need to prioritize people. You're a human being, not a human doing.

Information consumes the attention of its recipients,” he explained, and “a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.

In a world where information is freely available, focus becomes one of the most valuable commodities in the workplace.

If you design your life so that you spend most of your time working on things you are passionate about and proficient at, the discipline to do those things comes easily.

One speaker, Herbert Simon, was a Carnegie Mellon professor of computer science and psychology who later won a Nobel for his work in economics. In his presentation, he warned that the growth of information could become a burden. Why? “Information consumes the attention of its recipients,” he explained, and “a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.

Later I realized focusing on everything means focusing on nothing.

You will be the same person in five years as you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read.

No matter how talented you are, if you’re not making a contribution in a certain area, you’re not truly proficient.

Oliver Burkeman asks, “What will your life have been, in the end, but the sum total of everything you spent it focusing on?

Disappointing some people in life is inevitable, so make sure you’re not disappointing the ones who matter most,

Productivity is not about getting more things done; it's about getting the right things done.

If you want to master your schedule, increase your efficiency and output, and create more margin in your life for the things you care about, you've got to learn how to focus.

True productivity is about doing more of what is in your desire zone and less of everything else.

One pair of workplace consultants found “about half the work that people do fails to advance [their] organizations’ strategies.” In other words, half the effort and hours invested produce no positive results for the business. They call it “fake work.”7 We’re doing more and gaining less, which leaves us with a huge gap between what we want to achieve and what we actually accomplish.

Charlie “Tremendous” Jones used to say, “You will be the same person in five years as you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read.” I could not agree with this statement more.

We treat the pillow like the enemy of productivity, but skipping sleep ultimately hurts our work.

New tech solutions may enable us to work faster, but more significantly, that efficiency brings with it the temptation and expectation to work more.