Yourself, just 2x productive

69 Unorthodox And No-Bullsh*t Hacks to Supercharge Your Productivity

Here’s the real deal on optimizing your life, one unconventional tool at a time.

Look, you’re probably sick of all the usual ‘productivity hacks’ that overpromise and underdeliver. I’m with you. I’ve had my fill of fluff and fancy jargon, too.

So let’s cut the crap and get down to the nitty-gritty. This is not your run-of-the-mill listicle. This is a down-and-dirty, no-holds-barred compilation of the best, unorthodox tools I’ve discovered that actually work to supercharge your life.

No sugar-coating, no BS, just the good stuff. Buckle up, here they come, in no particular order:

1. Flow State Induction: Get into the zone faster with techniques like meditation, listening to concentration-boosting music, or setting up a personalized work ritual.
2. Digital Detoxes: Regularly scheduled periods without digital distractions to enhance focus and creativity.
3. The 2-Minute Rule: If a task takes less than 2 minutes, do it immediately rather than putting it off.
4. Affinity Diagramming: Organize ideas or tasks visually according to their natural relationships for more effective brainstorming and problem-solving.
5. The Seinfeld Strategy: Commit to doing a task every day, marking off each day on a calendar to form a chain. The goal is not to break the chain.
6. Time-Blocking: Designate specific time slots for different types of work or tasks.
7. Zero-Based Calendar: Schedule every minute of your day, leaving no time unaccounted for.
8. Roam Research or Obsidian: Use these knowledge management tools for interlinked, non-hierarchical note-taking.
9. Biophilic Design: Incorporate elements of nature into your workspace to improve well-being and productivity.
10. Mind Maps: Use this visual tool to brainstorm ideas and see the connections between them.
11. Parkinson’s Law Manipulation: Set tighter deadlines to complete tasks more efficiently as work expands to fill the time available for its completion.
12. The Pareto Principle (80/20 Rule): Focus on the 20% of tasks that generate 80% of the results.
13. Energy Management: Monitor your physical, emotional, and mental energy levels throughout the day and schedule tasks accordingly.
14. Outcome-Based Thinking: Start with the end goal and work backward to figure out the steps needed to reach it.
15. Eat the Frog: Tackle the most challenging task first thing in the morning when your willpower is highest.
16. The Five Second Rule: If you have an impulse to act on a goal, you must physically move within 5 seconds or your brain will kill the idea.
17. The Zeigarnik Effect: Use the psychological tendency to remember uncompleted tasks to your advantage by starting a task to encourage completion.
18. A Stand-Up Desk: This promotes better posture and energy levels.
19. Voice Dictation Software: This can speed up the process of writing emails or notes.
20. Forest App: A productivity app that helps you stay focused on your work by planting virtual trees. If you get distracted and leave the app, your tree dies, encouraging you to stay focused.
21. The Swiss Cheese Method: Break down a large task into smaller, manageable parts and start tackling them.
22. Focusmate: An accountability partner service that matches you with someone to work alongside virtually.
23. Hyper-Scheduling: Schedule your day in detail, including work, meals, relaxation, and sleep.
24. Bullet Journaling: A customizable organization system that can be your to-do list, sketchbook, notebook, and diary all in one.
25. Gratitude Journaling: Boost your mood and overall outlook, improving your work efficiency.
26. Weekly Reviews: Regularly review your tasks, progress, and upcoming projects at the end of each week.
27. Gamification Apps: Use apps like Habitica that turn your tasks into a game, making them more enjoyable.
28. The Feynman Technique: Learn new material faster by teaching it to someone else, or pretending to.
29. Visual Cue Triggers: Use visual cues to trigger habits and tasks. For instance, a water bottle on your desk can remind you to stay hydrated.
30. The 1–3–5 Rule: Plan your day around 1 big task, 3 medium tasks, and 5 small tasks.
31. Mood Tracking: Understand how your mood impacts your productivity and vice versa.
32. Loop Habit Tracker: Track and improve your habits to boost productivity.
33. The Getting Things Done (GTD) Method: A time management method by David Allen to help you organize tasks.
34. Second Brain Method: Use digital tools to create a ‘second brain’ that stores your ideas, notes, and to-do lists.
35. Workplace Design: Tailor your workspace to minimize distractions and maximize comfort and efficiency.
36. Email Batching: Set specific times during the day to check and respond to emails instead of constantly checking.
37. Walking Meetings: Have meetings on the go. The change of scenery can boost creativity and engagement.
38. Deep Work Sessions: Set aside regular, uninterrupted time for focused work.
39. The Four Ds of Time Management: Divide tasks into four categories — Do, Defer, Delegate, Delete — to manage your time more effectively.
40. Socratic Method: Use a question-and-answer dialogue to stimulate critical thinking and illuminate ideas.
41. The Eisenhower Box: A decision-making tool that helps prioritize tasks by urgency and importance.
42. The Cornell Note-Taking System: A systematic format for condensing and organizing notes.
43. The PAO System: A memory technique that enhances information recall.
44. Scrum Methodology: A framework for project management that emphasizes teamwork, accountability, and iterative progress.
45. Mental Contrasting: Visualize a goal, but also the challenges that stand in the way.
46. Rapid Logging: A quick note-taking method used in bullet journaling.
47. Just-In-Time Learning: Learn things as you need them rather than in advance.
48. Mindful Mornings: Start your day with mindfulness exercises for a focused, productive day.
49. The Action Priority Matrix: Helps you decide on the action sequence based on the effort and potential impact.
50. Thematic Days: Assign specific themes to each workday.
51. The Two Pizza Rule: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ rule for meetings — if two pizzas can’t feed the entire group, the meeting is too large.
52. The 10/10/10 Rule: Consider the impact of your decisions in 10 minutes, 10 months, and 10 years.
53. The Fresh Start Effect: Leverage the feeling of a new beginning for motivation.
54. The 5 Whys Technique: Keep asking ‘why’ until you find the root cause of a problem.
55. The 5 Minute Journal: A journaling method for fostering gratitude and happiness.
56. Chunking: Break down large projects or tasks into smaller, manageable ‘chunks’.
57. The Snowball Method: Start with the smallest task and gradually tackle bigger ones, similar to the debt snowball method.
58. The 90/90/1 Rule: For the next 90 days, spend the first 90 minutes of your workday on the most valuable task.
59. Murphy’s Law Planning: Anticipate that things can go wrong and plan accordingly.
60. Meditative Breaks: Short meditation sessions to clear the mind and reduce stress.
61. The Benjamin Franklin Method: Allocate time for each part of your daily routine, following Benjamin Franklin’s example.
62. The MoSCoW Method: Prioritize tasks based on Must have, Should have, Could have, and Won’t have.
63. The ABCDE Method: Rank your tasks from A (highest priority) to E (lowest priority).
64. The Six Thinking Hats: A decision-making tool that forces you to think in different ways.
65. The 10000 Hours Rule: Practice a skill for 10000 hours to achieve mastery.
66. The Law of Diminishing Returns: Understand when additional effort does not result in proportional benefits.
67. Visual Imagery: Visualize success to improve motivation and performance.
68. The Time Pyramid: Spend more time on tasks that contribute to long-term goals and less time on tasks that only have short-term benefits.
69. Don’t follows somebody else’s advice: Find your own productivity hacks!

So, there you have it. Sixty-nine tools, stripped of all the marketing hype and productivity glitter. They’re not magic bullets, and they’re not for everyone. But give them a whirl, and you might just find a few that resonate with you.

The bottom line? Productivity isn’t about cramming more into your day; it’s about getting more out of what you put in.

Remember, it’s your life. Don’t just fill it with stuff — make it count.

Now, over to you.

Have you got some killer productivity tools of your own? The ones that have changed the game for you?

I’m all ears.

Leave them in the comments and let’s keep this productivity party going. Because at the end of the day, we’re all just trying to figure out this thing called life, one productivity hack at a time.

by Eric. Subscribe for more.