Today I have a treat for you. Cal Newport from Study Hacks is going to share some of his insights on productivity. Cal is also the author of How to Become a Straight-A Student and How to Win at College. He is currently studying for a PhD at MIT.
Last August, I published an essay on my blog, Study Hacks, that was titled: Productivity is Overrated. The basic idea: productivity systems, like Getting Things Done, reduce stress and help you keep track of your obligations, they do not, however, make you accomplished. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the act of becoming accomplished is almost entirely unrelated to being productive.
Productivity is Overrated
That is, the two don’t need to go together. Indeed, as an author, I’ve spent the past five years researching and interviewing unusually accomplished young people, and I would estimate that the majority of them are terribly disorganized. The minority that did have good productivity habits were certainly less stressed. But it played little role in predicting their ultimate success.
What Accomplished People Do Differently
From my experience, the most common trait you will consistently observe in accomplished people is an obsession with completion. Once a project falls into their horizon, they crave, almost compulsively, to finish it. If they’re organized, this might happen in scheduled chunks. If they’re not — like many — this might happen in all-nighters. But they get it done. Fast and consistently.
It’s this constant stream of finishing that begins, over time, to unlock more and more interesting opportunities and eventually leads to their big scores.
If you are productive without harboring this intense desire for completion, you will end up just being busy. We all know the feeling. You work all day off of your to-do list. Everything is organized. Everything is scheduled. Yet, still, months pass with no important projects getting accomplished.
In this post, I want to present a simple system, based on my observation of the highly accomplished, that will help you cultivate your own completion obsession.
Introducing Completion-Centric Planning
With traditional GTD-style methodology, during each day, you look at your current context and at your next action lists and choose what to do next. It’s easy, in this case, to fall into a infinite task loop where you are consistently accomplishing little actions from your next action lists but making little progress toward completing the big projects. This is what I call the Zeno’sParadox of Productivity. Give me any project, and I can fill days with easy, fun little tasks on the project without ever finishing it.
Here’s the reality: Real accomplishments require really hard pushes. GTD style, “one independent task at a time” productivity systems make it easy to avoid these pushes by instead doing a lot of little easy things.
Completion-centric planning rectifies this problem. It refocuses you on completion of projects — not tasks — as the central organizing principle for each day. It works as follows:
Setup: Construct a Project Page
Using a single-paged document in your favorite word processor, do the following:
- Make an Active Projects List
List 6 – 12 of the most important projects in your life. Pull from all three relevant spheres: professional (e.g., school or work related); personal (e.g., home, family, fitness); and extra (e.g., big projects like blogging, writing a book, starting a club). - Label Each Project With A Completion Criteria
To quote David Allen, to finish a project you must “know what done looks like.” Next to each project type a concise description of what action must be completed for the project to be completed. (When you do this, you’ll notice how easy it was for you before to think about projects in a much more ambiguous, impossible to complete style). - Label the Bottom Half of the Page as a “Holding Pen”
This is where you can jot down new projects that enter your life while you’re working on the active projects. They can be stored here until you complete the current batch.
Example: My Current Project Page
Below is my current project page, just started, on October 12th. Excuse the wrinkles, I keep it in my pocket all day:
Using the System: The Daily Check-In
Each morning, look at your project page and ask: “What’s the most progress I can make toward completing this list today?” Your biggest goal should be to complete projects. If you see a way to do it (even if it requires a big push, perhaps working late) go for it. If you can’t finish one, think of the single thing you could do that would get you closest to this goal over the next few days. Harbor an obsession for killing this list!
At the same time, of course, you should still reference your existing productivity system. Outside of your projects you probably have other, more mundane tasks that need to get done. Your goal here is to make as much progress on your projects as possible despite the other responsibilities you have each day.
Finishing: Rest and Reload
Don’t start new projects until you’ve finished the projects on your current project page. If you dynamically repopulate this list your are liable to let the least fun projects lie fallow indefinitely. If you come up with new project ideas before you complete the current active projects, simply jot them down in your holding pen.
Work as hard as possible to finish your projects as fast as possible. Once done, take a break. For at least a week. Try to do a minimum of work during this time. Recharge. Then, once you’re ready, build a new project page and start over again.
Why This Works
The work flow rhythm required by completion-centric planning is as close as I can get to describing how really accomplished people tend to tackle their work. This approach doesn’t have the same effortless, autopilot appeal of a pure, GTD style work flow. But, unfortunately, accomplishment is not pretty. If you want to make your mark, you have to learn how to charge after things with a furious zeal. This system will help you develop that trait. The rest will follow.
Related Articles from Study Hacks
- Dangerous Ideas: Productivity is Overrated
- The Einstein Principle: Accomplish More by Doing Less
- Dangerous Ideas: What if Everything We Thought Was True About Productivity Was Wrong?
Note from Scott: I completely agree with Cal here, as a completion focus is something I strive for myself. I generally do assignments and projects that are 1-4 hours in one sitting, and aim for speedy completion of bigger projects. Don’t confuse this completion focus (which deals with the process of getting things done) and a process focus (which deals with the broader theme of craving and motivation) as the two function together, just on different levels.
I'm a speed-reading, vegetarian, holistic learning, productivity hacking university student.
[...] is the Key to Productivity – This is an article I wrote before Cal’s great entry, The Art of the Finish. Both aim to break away from the myth that being super-organized, carrying lists and writing to-do [...]
[...] just measure tasks (which can be a trap in itself), measure projects. Look at the progress every day is making towards projects and use that as a [...]
[...] is that it provides the time needed to make big progress on big projects. I’ve written many times before on how to keep your attention focused on a small number of projects to ensure consistent [...]
Thanks to Scott and Cal for posting this, I’ve been frustrated at not finishing things for a while and this looks like the ideal solution. Thanks!
[...] Note from Scott: Cal Newport, MIT graduate student, author of two books and blogger at Study Hacks has offered to help me out during the recovery from my illness by writing a guest post. You can check out his fantastic blog at: http://www.calnewport.com/blog/ or read his other popular guest post on this website, The Art of the Finish. [...]
[...] of ongoing projects drag on and on, I have been trying to implement Cal Newport’s idea of a completion-centric productivity. In a [...]
[...] The Art of the Finish – Cal Newport’s fantastic guest article on this website. The main idea: productivity isn’t doing tasks, it’s getting projects finished. Unless your productivity system is geared with completion in mind, you’ll end up spinning your wheels. [...]
I’m a mom of 3 young kids who have all just started school which leaves me completely free in the mornings. I had so many ideas and things I wanted to catch up on since I stopped working and find myself in a complete state with tons of unfinished art / sewing / excercise projects and it’s driving me crazy! Can you imagine my joy when in a fit of frustration I googled ‘getting things finished’ and up came the answer I’ve been looking for! In a word ‘COMPLETION’. WOW, why didn’t I think of that!!!? It’s like a light has just gone on in this fuzzy brain of mine! ha ha. I’ve started a project page and am so excited to start and accomplish. Thanks Scott.
Scott,
It seems to me, that in essence, to complete the work
one has to go for “low hanging fruit”
however….
inevitable one has to go for higher and higher fruit
every time with out burning out mentally and emotionally.
(outside comfort zone)
Cal Newport, thx for commenting this post.
Andres: Agreed.
[...] The Art of the Finish: How to Go From Busy to Accomplished: Follow the advice in this post to complete more of your goals. [...]
[...] Accomplished Project Management – Scott Young [...]
[...] matter whether you sort your lists with ranked A, B and C priority items, or by context in GTD, or keep a list of projects in your pocket like Cal Newport, or go through your list in a clever way like in Mark Forster’s Autofocus [...]
[...] The details of how I accomplish the last two steps are covered deeply in my guide. But I also have a ton of free articles you can read here, here and here. [...]
Love it! You guys are really on to something here. GTD style systems have always kept me busy and organized, but it was only when I went “off grid” that I got anything done: Starting a company, developing a non-profit, casting a vision for something new.
[...] The Art of the Finish: How to Go From Busy to Accomplished [...]
I love the idea of keeping the project page in your pocket. I usually have such a page, but it is never where I want it, when I want it. If it’s in my pocket, I always have it. So, thanks for the idea! Mine is now in my pocket, and strangely, I feel much more committed to it now.
[...] was reading Scott Young’s The Art of the Finish a few night ago. To quote Scott: “From my experience, the most common trait you will [...]
I feel extremely motivated by this post and will be trying out this method right now. Thanks for the tips!
[...] - The Art of the Finish: How to Go From Busy to Accomplished – This post was written about three years ago on Scott H Young’s blog. It was written [...]
[...] - The Art of the Finish: How to Go From Busy to Accomplished – This post was written about three years ago on Scott H Young’s blog. It was written by Cal [...]
To me it is always ‘one … at a time’ whether that be one lift at a time, one set at a time, one workout at a time.
This is an interesting concept of “completing” a project versus being organized and doing chunks of many things. It does make sense to complete big overall ideas rather than half-doing small projects.
Success is a commitment to completion. It is not a good idea to keep starting projects and leaving it. You presented some interesting concepts here that I have never heard told in this way and it make sense. I like your idea.