Category Archives: Productivity

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.

4DX: Applying the Second Discipline

The second discipline of The Four Disciplines of Execution is to act on lead measures to accomplish the Wildly Important Goal (WIG). I defined my three WIGs yesterday

Work: no launch blockers in the product by March 31, 2024
Fitness: Go from 23% body fat to under 20% body fat by December 31, 2024.
Personal Growth: Write two 50-page books and put them up for sale by the end of 2024.

For each of those, I have inherently expressed them in a way that defines a “lag” measure. On March 31, I will have launch blockers or not, but there will be nothing I can do on that day to change it. Each day, I will go on my scale and see my body fat %, but I will not really be able to do something that directly affects that in the short term.

4DX asks us to define lead measures that are things we can do right now that will lead to us accomplishing our lag measures. It measures our real-time activity, not the end result of the activity.

For work, it’s going to be time spent coding on launch blockers. I think I can get through the list if I spend 4+ coding hours on launch blockers per week. That might seem like too little—which is common in 4DX goals. You must accept that you still have all of the operational things you have to do. My partner and I are still experimenting, supporting early users, and possibly pivoting. I obviously need to work more than 4 hours per week on the project, but the majority of them are spent dealing with what the business needs today. My WIG is about how we get to the next level.

For fitness, I am accepting that my amount of body fat is very hard to lower (I have lowered it a lot, but have been stuck for a year), and so I am going to work on my amount of muscle mass, which means that I will do more strength training. My lead measure is to do 4 sessions of 10+ minute weight training workouts per week. It’s not 4+, because rest is important. It’s only 10 minutes, because I am working one body part fairly heavy and to failure. I am doing other workouts—these are in addition to what I am already doing, usually on the same day.

To support this, I am adding a secondary leading measure of eating a high-protein, lower carb breakfast 5 days per week. I usually eat oatmeal and fruit, which is perfectly sensible, but perhaps not supporting my WIG as well. I am not a low-carb person (quite the opposite), but I want to reduce this kind of carb. My new staple breakfast will be an egg substitute I make from soaked mung beans (similar to Just Egg) and tofu or tempeh. There is also a cafe near me that makes Just Egg omelets that I will have when I’m lazy. I might also use protein shakes, but rarely.

For my personal goal, since I am aiming for 50 page books, it might be tempting to have a weekly page count goal, but that won’t work for me because I write in drafts. Like my work goal, I think the easiest lead measure will be hours per week, so I will work on the book for at least one hour on five days per week. This will result in 5+ hours per week, but I think it’s important to have a daily practice of writing and not just do 5 hours in one day per week. It seems low, but I have other things I am doing besides this to maintain my level of output. I still want my blog and podcast to be going at the same time. The WIG is about what I can do to get to another level, not something I do instead of what I am doing now. In 6 months, that’s about 130 hours, which should be enough time to write and edit 50 pages.

You might disagree with my goals, and how I am trying to accomplish them. That’s ok, but that’s not the point. The point is that I am trying to accomplish big goals by concentrating on a process that is much more short-term and something I can definitely do (4DX calls this playing a winnable game). I will be checking in every 13 weeks to see if I am moving the lag measure, and adjust if not.

4DX: Applying the First Discipline

In yesterday’s post about The Four Disciplines of Execution, I quickly went through the disciplines and how I am applying them. Today, I want to talk more about the first one, which is to choose one “Wildly Important” goal (WIG), and my thought process as I chose mine.

The first thing to notice is that the book asks you to choose only one WIG. I may be going off script by choosing three, but I am choosing them in very different areas of my life. I have only one work-related WIG, one health WIG, and one personal growth WIG. The book is mostly about work, but I have time carved out for health and personal growth that is separate from work. I have separation between them, so I my focus on one does not affect my focus on another (at the appropriate time).

To find a WIG. The book asks you to define (1) Where you are now (2) Where you want to be, and (3) by when. It’s the same idea as SMART goals.

For work, I am working on a startup with a partner, where I am doing the technical part.

Where am I now? We have an MVP, and we use it every day along with a few trusted users. We have a series of gates we want to get through to launch. Right now, it’s usable, but we’re still missing some core features.
Where do I want to be? Ideally launched, with users, and with some revenue. But, that depends on a lot of factors outside of my control, so it would be hard to put a deadline on it. To make it possible for me to accomplish the goal, it needs to be expressed as something I can do without dependencies.
By When? It’s not ideal for a WIG, which should be longer term, but I think this project will go through phases with different goals right now as we progress through gates. So I am doing this quarter by quarter.

So, my WIG for this is to have no launch blockers in the product by March 31, 2024. There are several features missing that make it impossible to launch today (e.g. signup, forgot password, billing). There aren’t too many of them, and it’s very doable by March. To support our experimentation and product design, there are still other things we should do, but they are not blockers. We may not launch for other reasons, but not because of basic functionality.

My health/fitness WIG is simpler because it inherently doesn’t have dependencies.

Where am I now? I am happy with my level of fitness and health. I have been vegan for a few years and I can generally stay in the weight range I want to be. However, since I was obese for many years, I still have more body fat than I would like. I use a body fat scale that says it’s about 23%, which is accurate enough for my purposes.
Where do I want to be? I have been stuck at this level for a while. Realistically, I could shoot for less than 20%.
By when? The end of 2024.

Fitness WIG: Go from 23% body fat to under 20% body fat by December 31, 2024.

My personal growth goal is related to writing, which is the main thing I have been working on for the past 3 years.

Where am I now? I write regularly in this blog, and I have a writing-themed podcast that is intentionally off-an-on. In 2013, I got a book published by Manning and I have been paid to write articles for Smashing and other places.
Where do I want to be? I want to have more longer-form published work that I sell.
By when? One by June 30 and another by December 31.

Personal Growth WIG: Write two 50-page books by the end of 2024 and put them up for sale.

Tomorrow, I’ll show you how I applied the 2nd discipline.

How I am applying The Four Disciplines of Execution

I read The Four Disciplines of Execution (4DX) a few months ago. It was recommended to me several times—I wish I had read it sooner. It’s in the genre of business productivity systems, which is not surprising since one of the authors, Sean Covey, is the son of Stephen Covey (author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People).

Like many books in this genre, the book is part of an entire ecosystem, with courses, videos, etc. You can get a good overview there.

Here is a quick summary of the 4 disciplines (it’s more complex than this—the book is worth reading for details)

Have a single important goal that would make a meaningful difference (in your business, life, etc). This will have some lagging indicator.
Figure out a leading indicator that you can act on and track. This is something you can do every day that will build up to the important goal.
Build a compelling scoreboard that tells you if you are winning (achieving the leading indicator).
Have regular (weekly) accountability meetings where you only discuss the goal, leading indicators, and how to put points on the board

To give an example, here’s how I am applying it to my fitness:

Important goal: Reduce Body Fat %. I am doing this primarily by increasing muscle mass. My lagging indicators are goals in bench press and strict pull-ups.
Leading indicator: Days per week doing resistance training.
Scoreboard: I track the workouts on my Apple Watch. I can see the count in the fitness apps I use. My scale tells me Body Fat % to make sure I’m on track. I am also tracking hours in Zone 2 and higher as a secondary indicator.
Accountability: I review it weekly and schedule the next week’s workouts. I also go to Crossfit, which gives me access to coaches that can help.

My personal growth goal is to publish some pamphlets (short books) this year. Here’s my 4DX

Important goal: publish pamphlets. Lagging indicator is 2 books.
Leading indicator: Hours writing per week.
Scoreboard: I’m using personal productivity software that I am working on.
Accountability: I am making season four of my podcast about this where I will discuss my process and progress.

My work goal is to launch the productivity tool I am working on

Important goal: Launch
Leading indicator: Hours coding
Scoreboard: Also tracking in this tool
Accountability: I have weekly meeting with my partner where we discuss progress.

All of my leading indicators are in SMART goal format: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. The main difference is that they are very short-term and more about process.

Obviously, it doesn’t matter if I achieve the leading indicators, but not the lagging ones—the lagging ones are the real goal. The idea (from 4DX) is that leading indicators are something you can act on and track each day. You trust yourself to pick things that are likely to result in the bigger goal. You adjust if they aren’t.

Time in the Zone

I read The Four Disciplines of Execution last year and my main takeaway was that I should build a scoreboard to track a leading indicator of whether I’m “winning” at my important goals.

For tracking my fitness, I’m using the Zones for Training app, which has a nice widget that compares the current cumulative week to the previous one. The number is just the minutes my heart rate was in an exercise zone. I have a goal, but I can also compete with how I did last week.

A dashboard of cumulative time spent in heart rate zones

Leading indicators can be more complex, but just tracking the time that I spend on the important things is enough to get started. I trust that I’ll use that time wisely.

Running Through the New Year

One lesson I learned from Ramit Sethi was to just start your New Years resolutions in December. That way you get a jump start. You get to start the new year with having already made some progress.

I do themes, not resolutions, but the same concept applies. My theme last year was to Make Art with Friends and that went pretty well. I set out to collaborate with others and try to meet more likeminded people who liked to make things. As 2023 is coming to a close, I think I can maintain my gains here without it being my main focus.

This year, I am going to refocus on my fitness, specifically strength training. As I age, I am more concerned with muscle and bone health and I’m convinced that lifting heavy things is the way to go. I’m not waiting until January 1st—I started yesterday.

With that goal and my other plans, I decided to make 2024 The Year of Heavy Lifting. It’s a year where I plan to do some hard things that I’ve been putting off.

If you usually do something for the new year (a resolution, a theme, whatever) don’t wait—start now.

2024 Page-o-Mat Journal

Last year, I released Page-o-Mat, a YAML-based language for defining journal PDFs so that I could make my own Recurring Journal. I used this journal all throughout 2023 and gave some updates along the way: The First 13 Weeks, The Second 13 Weeks, and The Third 13 Weeks. I split the year into 13 week quarters because I do all of my planning by weeks and months and quarters aren’t regular enough.

I just finished making the 2024 version and got a nice surprise. Because January 1st is a Monday, and 2024 is a leap year, the first three quarters line up on 13-week boundaries. Jan 1, April 1, and July 1 are all 13-weeks apart and on Mondays. It’s unnecessary for the way I like to journal, but I do appreciate this. It won’t happen again until 2052.

I pushed the new yaml to the Page-o-Mat repo. There are instructions for building the PDF in the README. I will also be putting a book based on this PDF on LuLu.