Category Archives: Productivity

2025 Pre-Planning

In 2024, I applied The Four Disciplines of Execution to my life and business. I detailed the process for my 2024 plan in a blog post for each discipline:

4DX: Applying the First Discipline (pick a goal)
4DX: Applying the Second Discipline (identify and work on the leading indicators)
4DX: Applying the Third Discipline (build a scoreboard to tell you if you are winning)
4DX: Applying the Fourth Discipline (review with accountability)

The first discipline is to pick a single Wildly Important Goal (WIG), but that’s because they imagine that you are doing this only for work. I do it for three completely segregated areas of my life that I can stop from interfering with each other: Work, Personal Growth, and Fitness. I can always make time for each those three independent of the other two. This is important, because the enemy of your WIG (in the book) is the Whirlwind of activities you need to do just to keep going. My work Whirlwind will interfere with my work WIG, but (for me) it doesn’t stop me from working out or working on my personal growth WIGs.

This is just a brain dump of possible WIGs for 2025 in each category.

Personal: I have sold 0 copies of Pay Tech Debt to Go Faster Now (it’s not done), so I want to have it available for sale by end of Q1 2025 and sell 1,000 copies by the end of the year.

Alternatives: (1) Outsource the end tasks of the book and start a new one (2) Sell whatever I can and build a course based on the book that is the focus (3) Sell whatever I can and try to do workshops at tech conferences based on it.

Work: I have a working, but not useful MVP of a new web application, and am mid reconfiguration into a simpler (and somewhat different) mobile web app. I am trying to get to a new MVP by January 2025. My goal is to have paid customers by the end of Q1.

Alternatives: (1) Give up on this idea and try something else (2) Give up and don’t try to make a software product — e.g. turn the book into my business

Fitness: I am in a fitness stasis, which might be what I have to live with for my age. It’s fine. But I still want less than 20% body fat by the end of the year. The way to do it is radical change, which I will think about and perhaps aim for 20% by the end of Q1. The rest of the year will be about maintenance and sustainability. The answer is probably a combination of regular exercise (easy), daily walking (takes time, but could multitask with something), and a more significant calorie deficit accomplished with more careful eating (hardest).

Alternatives: (1) make maintenance the goal and just be happy with my level of fitness (2) make having fun the goal and go for more varied experiences.

This year looks a lot like 2024, but geared more finishing (where 2024 was about starting).

Identity is a Powerful Habit Totem

In my post, Environment Hacking, I wrote about a problem I ran into with BJ Fogg’s Behavior Model:

One of BJ Fogg’s insights is that you already have habits that are completely automatic, so he suggests using those as prompts for a new habit you are trying to build. You repeat to yourself, “After I do [some automatic habit], I will do [some tiny version of a new habit]”. For example, “after I brush my teeth, I will floss one tooth”. In this case, the environment is your existing habit.

This works great, but I have some habits that I can’t easily tie to existing one (or at least I haven’t been successful at it yet). For these kinds of habits, I have been thinking of “habit totems” I can put into the environment to prompt me.

In that article, the idea was to place objects in the world that remind you to do things when you see them. I called those objects “Habit Totems”. A Habit Totem works because it’s always present at the place where you want to do the habit, and it prompts you to do it.

Your identity can be a powerful Habit Totem because it is always present, and it changes how you perceive the environment such that it turns everything into a prompt.

I have an identity as a programmer. I program all of the time without prompts, because everything reminds me about programming. I also have an identity as someone that eats plant-based food—no prompt needed at the grocery store or restaurant because it’s just a part of who I am.

But I struggle with my aspirational identities. I want to be a writer, but I still haven’t assumed that identity enough for it to be a driver on its own. I want to make my plant-based identity more specific by becoming “whole-food plant-based”, but I haven’t made a lot of progress.

What I am trying now is to try to internalize that I have already become the identity I aspire to be. I walked through the grocery store last weekend just repeating “I only eat whole plant-based food” and managed to leave with a cart more aligned to that identity. I am writing this blog because “I am a writer” and a writer writes. When I thought about my experience at the grocery store, I was more compelled to write about it.

It’s only been a few days, but it feels very powerful so far.

Gray Time

I’m working on a task management app called Momentum and we just implemented a thing we’re calling “gray time”. This is what we call all those tasks we need to do just to keep things going, but they aren’t the most important things. At home, I need to make dinner, go grocery shopping, etc, but the two things I want to get really right in my personal life this year is to lose some body fat and publish a book. In my work, Momentum is the most important thing I am doing.

I know that a big part of my day could be gray. The goal is to get some non-gray time too. If I want to make progress on my most important goals, I have to make sure to acknowledge that everything else is gray.

Sometimes this hurts. I spent a lot of time yesterday working on little tasks—a bunch of them are meaningful to my happiness, like planning a trip and helping my produce my wife’s radio show. It’s not that I didn’t want to do them or that I’m not glad I did, but marking that time as gray makes sure I don’t stuff my day with too many of these tasks at the expense of the main things I am trying to do.

Win the Week

I use weekly metrics to reach bigger goals. I love this because I get to reset every week. If I fail one week, I haven’t derailed my entire progress, I just reassess and get back on track Monday. Sometimes when I have nothing to do on a Sunday, I try to win the week by catching up.

But, just like in Win the Morning, I try to front-load successes, so Monday is a big day for me. I try to make a lot of progress on my weekly metric. Today is Sunday, the end of the week for me, and I only have a little more to go on my main fitness goal, which will be easy. This is possible because from Monday to Wednesday, I did a lot. Since I actually do have a lot of time today, and my goal is walking, I’m set to overachieve for the week.

My work goals need to be finished up by Friday, so I make sure to never having meetings Monday and Tuesday unless it’s impossible otherwise. I try to book everything for Friday afternoon, where I’ll be trying to wind down anyway, and not looking to do a lot of focussed work.

I was never this way when I was younger. I was always procrastinating and cramming, which was especially bad in college. I got through it, but with a lot of unnecessary stress. After decades of tinkering, I hacked it so that procrastinating is something that happens at a weekly cadence, if it happens at all. By booking away the end of the week, I don’t give myself time to cram, so I have to get to it.

Double Down on Things that Work for You

At the end of January, I realized that the actions I decided to take for my fitness goals weren’t working, so I decided to add more light-impact cardio.

So, it appears that for me, I might need more cardio. From my research, I know that this may inhibit muscle growth, but that effect is because of calorie deficit. So, I will add more cardio (but low stress activities like swimming, rowing, and the elliptical) and I need to find a good healthy source of extra calories

Right after I wrote that, I realized that more walking might also help and was very easy to fit into my days. It’s only been two weeks, but the effect was obvious enough that I decided to do much more walking than I planned.

I started with a daily goal of 12,500 total steps, but now I get over 20k most days. The extra walking is hundreds of calories, which I eat because I am trying to build muscle.

To get this many steps, I have added the following practices:

Almost all of my reading or video watching is on a treadmill. I don’t need to make time for this. I do it in whatever clothes I’m wearing and keep it at a slow enough pace.
Almost all podcast listening has to be done on an outside walk.
If I have to walk somewhere, I leave a little early and add at least 10 minutes more walking each way.
I installed Pedometer++ on my iPhone/Watch and use their widgets as my scoreboard. My current steps is in a complication I see all day.
I try to get close to 10,000 steps in the morning (to win the morning).

20k might unsustainable long term, but I always dedicate the first thirteen weeks of the year to try to make big changes in my life so I can see what the impact would be. Then, I size it to something I can keep on doing.

Win the Morning

Using The Four Disciplines of Execution, I am trying to reach my goals by “playing a winnable game”. The strategy is to develop a lead measure that you can act on at any time (see 4DX: Applying the Second Discipline). But, I find that I win this game more often if I act in the morning.

For fitness, I am doing more strength workouts, incorporating long walks into my day, and eating a healthy high-protein breakfast. I work out at around 7am and eat breakfast soon afterwards, so this is usually done by 9. If I get up early enough, I do a long walk to the gym.

My other two goals have dedicated time allocated to them. I front-load that as much as possible, and move anything that could be distracting to late in the day (especially meetings). I want to work on the important tasks when I have the most energy for them.

According to When by Daniel Pink, for most people, the morning is good for deep work and the afternoon is better for collaboration and ideation. I am clearly one of the “most”, because this works well for me.

4 Week 4DX Checkin

I’m using techniques from The Four Disciplines of Execution (4DX) this year to help me reach my important goals. I documented my setup process in these posts:

The gist is that you (1) identify an important goal (2) design and act on lead measures — things you control that you can do at any time that will add up to that goal (3) create a compelling scoreboard and (4) have regular accountability.

I chose to have 3 goals in 3 separate areas of my life that have segregated time. The book stresses having only one goal, because they are imagining that you apply this to work—I do have only one work goal.

For my work and personal growth goals, I have done my lead measures at or more than the level I wanted and I am making progress. Things seem to be going fine there.

For my fitness goal, I am doing what I set out to do, but I am not seeing progress, so it’s time to rethink if my lead measures are right. In my case, I think they are generally good things to do, so I will keep doing them, but they are obviously not enough.

In 4DX, we are supposed to periodically make sure our lead measures are taking us where we want to go. So, I want to share my thinking. The point is not my specific fitness goals or process—if you disagree with my fitness approach, that’s fine—the point is that I am trying to incorporate new knowledge and try something else.

Here’s my thinking:

My fitness goal is to reduce body fat with the lead measures of strength training and higher protein breakfasts. The result so far is that I am getting stronger (can do more pullups, lift more), but my body fat % hasn’t changed at all. My weight also hasn’t changed, but I am ok with that. I have been using a body fat scale since 2019, so I looked at my history, and I see that my lowest body fat % was when I was doing the most running. This is frustrating.

I chose to lower the amount of running I do because I am trying to avoid knee problems. I don’t have any now, and I want to keep it that way. During my lowest body fat periods, I was training for half and full marathons, which I am not planning to ever do again.

So, it appears that for me, I might need more cardio. From my research, I know that this may inhibit muscle growth, but that effect is because of calorie deficit. So, I will add more cardio (but low stress activities like swimming, rowing, and the elliptical) and I need to find a good healthy source of extra calories. I hate to rely on protein shakes, but that will be part of it. I have also seen some research that would indicate that I should substitute whole starches for tofu and tempeh because of their high fat content.

So, my breakfast will have fewer tofu scrambles with tempeh bacon and I’ll have to come up with a bean/quinoa breakfast. I also make an egg substitute from mung beans that has better macros than Just Egg, which I’ve been having a lot of. I will also cut bread as much as I can—mostly this is a problem because I use plant burgers as an easy lunch—I’ll just have to have it with no bun.

So, my new lead measures are to keep the strength workouts, add three 30+ minute low-stress cardio workouts, and keep the breakfast, but lean more on beans/quinoa/mung beans and less on tofu and tempeh, and skip the bread as much as I can. I will need more calories, but I will find them in whole starches.

In any case, don’t let my fitness choices distract you. The point is to periodically look at your desired lag measures for your goal and make sure your lead measures are moving towards it. It’s not something you can see every day, but I think four weeks is enough.

Making Time

You can say that you find time to do something or take time to do something, but I like saying I make time to do something.

Time, of course, can’t be made, so it’s magic if you do it.

4DX: Applying the Fourth Discipline

See 4DX: Applying the Third Discipline to get a summary of the WIGs and Lead Measures.

The final discipline is to have weekly accountability meetings that are only about 4DX, the WIG, the lead measures and how to do better in the coming week.

This is hard because I mostly work alone. I do a weekly retrospective, so I mostly need to just make sure I always review my scoreboard from the 3rd discipline.

For my fitness goal, I go to Crossfit which puts me in a room with several coaches and peers. I track my lifts in the gym’s app, which I share. If I stumble with this goal, I may add more direct accountability.

For my work goal, I have a partner and we already have weekly status meetings. They are not 4DX specific, so again, if this goal is not reached by March 31, then I may ask for 4DX meetings.

For my personal growth goal, I have decided to share my progress in a weekly podcast. I just joined the Useful Books community in order to meet like-minded people and perhaps join an accountability group.

For all three of my WIGs, I am not yet really doing the fourth discipline correctly, but I will try to move towards that as I progress.

4DX: Applying the Third Discipline

Previously:

4DX: Applying the First Discipline (WIGs)
4DX: Applying the Second Discipline (Lead Measures)

Now we have Wildly Important Goals (WIGs) and Lead Measures to act on.

Work: Get to no launch blockers in the product by March 31 by spending 4 hours per week on them
Fitness: Go from 23% body fat to under 20% by December 31 by doing 4 strength workouts per week and having 5 high-protein breakfasts per week.
Personal Growth: Publish two 50-page books by December 31 by working on them 5 days per week for at least one hour per day.

The third discipline is to build a compelling scoreboard. The idea is that it’s like a scoreboard in any sport—you can look at it and instantly see if you are winning.

The trick is to build a player’s scoreboard and not a coach’s one. In basketball, a coach would have free-throw percentages, blocks, assists, and many useful pieces of data. The player has points and fouls and little else. Player’s need signals to help them make quick decisions, not tons of data to analyze. While we’re working, we’re players, and we need to know if we’re winning at a glance. The other data is collected and we (or our managers/coaches) might analyze them, but we don’t need to see it all of the time. We always need to know the score and whether we’re winning.

To keep this simple, I decided to dedicate a page on my journal to the first 13 weeks. I have 13 rows (one for each week) and then columns for each lead measure. I just need to put an X in the column when I do it. I can see my current week and compare it to the past. I’ll make a new grid every 13 weeks.

A page from a journal showing the WIG / Lead Measure scoreboard for 13 weeks.

I also track in software. Since I use an Apple Watch, I just start a Strength Workout on it right before I start to lift. The data shows up in many fitness apps I use daily. For the other two WIGs, I am using personal productivity software I am developing. I like the combo of paper and software. The software keeps it in my face when I am at my computer and my journal is always around when I’m not.