Last Updated on March 6, 2023
I’ve spend a lot of time thinking about productivity over the years and written more generally about it here.
I think I’ve finally worked out a good approach to get on top of things and it’s a combination of a few different tools/systems.
What is the Eisenhower Matrix?
Here’s a long explanation from Todoist if you are not familiar.
What are NUI Tasks?
NUI stands for non urgent, important. You can pronounce NUI in NUI tasks as “new-ee”. NUI tasks are tasks that fall in the quadrant of not urgent, but important. I never spend enough time on those!
My process
Here are the key parts
- Identify the things you keep putting off because they are not urgent. Of these, identify which are important. These are your NUI tasks.
- At a regular interval, e.g. daily or weekly, choose some of these to work on. Ideally schedule them ahead and commit to them. (Every Tuesday I choose 2-5 of them and commit to having them finished by Saturday.)
Hat tip to all the systems that have influenced this:
Getting Things Done
Tiny Habits
OKRs
Commit Action