The Productivity Series

We have a model for the proper performance of the lifts and we understand programming principles and how to drive progress over time, but we have to acknowledge that for lots of people lots of the time, they can’t train optimally. And, honestly, at some point everyone–every single person–will be unable to train optimally. In these cases, we have to do the best we can.

Life comes up and presents obstacles to consistent training: vacation, work, family, holidays, and injuries. Furthermore, some people can’t perform the lifts as we tend to coach them. We have to deviate from the model intelligently.

If, for example, you can’t low bar squat, try thumbs around the bar. Try the high bar or front squat. You may have to specialize in the deadlift. And, over time, you may be able to low bar squat depending on your limitations.

Though we advocate the low bar squat and a specific way to perform the lifts based on biomechanics, we know that squatting is better than not squatting at all because you can’t low bar squat. If your gym closes, exercising is better than doing nothing.

As an example of an intelligent deviation from optimal programming, Matt tore his pec. He now limits bench press intensity to 315. He won’t ever hit a bench press intensity PR. Because of this, he prioritizes the press, he does higher volume at lower reps, and he–again–does the best he can.

Time is one of the biggest limitations for people. You have to block out time and commit to training during that time. It might not be 3 or 4 times a week: it might be 5 super short workouts during lunch. It might be 2 workouts. You might have to shorten rest periods. You might have to do your warm ups for your next lift during your rest periods. That’s okay: it’s better than not training.

A huge part of this is to stay in the habit and not get into a slump of not training. If you take long breaks from training, it gets harder to return. Maintaining a habit of exercise–even if it’s something in a crappy hotel gym–is better than doing nothing.

Finally, we have to acknowledge that there’s not a huge number of people who can string together 6 weeks of optimal training. Though some of these could prioritize training and get it done, life gets in the way and that’s okay. We maintain the habit, do the best we can, and continue to do hard things.

Scott & Matt share some of their productivity tips: what to do, what to not do, and what equipment or apps help them.

When it comes to equipment and apps, both of them find having one huge monitor, 2 monitors, or 3 monitors helps, as one monitor simply adds time to tasks on the computer.

Scott has also found value in having a scanner to digitize documents. He puts these on Evernote and finds this saves time, helps keep these organized, and saves space.

Both Scott and Matt value a quality backpack and headphones, which can help prevent noises distracting you when you work.

Much of productivity is organizing tasks and ensuring dedicated blocks to get both urgent and important tasks done. Preventing distractions–including notifications, family interruptions, and your phone going off is critical. Matt follows the Pomodoro technique, which recommends blocks of completely undistracted time to knock out tasks on your tasks list. The general recommendation is 25 minutes, as it’s long enough you can complete plenty of tasks but short enough that you can fit a few into your day and it doesn’t become too inconvenient for others around you.

Scott has some tips as well.

Ensure you don’t put projects on your task list. If you find that something stays on your task list, there’s a couple ways to deal with it. If it takes less than 3 minutes to do, just do it immediately, as it takes 3 minutes to put it off. If it’s really a project, break up the projects into tasks and put those tasks onto the list. Finally, if the tasks are important but not urgent, create a Sunday Maybe list where you can put important tasks that are not urgent so you can both organize them, put a place for them, but not feel guilty because they’ve stayed on your to do list for weeks or months.

One other note is to consider the trade off with time and money. There may be things that take up huge amounts of time and that you don’t enjoy. If you can afford to spend the money and feel the trade off is worth it, have someone else do it for you (trade the money for the additional time and fill that time with important things, which–important–may end up making you more money).

As advocates of strength training, we encourage people to add strength training as a habit. Many of the most important things we need to do to live a more fulfilling, productive life, however, involve breaking bad habits.

Bad habits don’t have to be bad in a moral sense. They ultimately don’t provide us value and bring us closer to our goals. They might waste time or money. They might prevent us from building positive habits. They might make us less healthy or happy.

Stopping these habits can be difficult. The win of not doing these is often not enough. We can leverage the fact that as humans we dislike losing more than we like winning, so we need to devise punishments or negative consequences for doing the habit and have SOMEONE ELSE hold us accountable.

A note here is that the consequence should not be related to the habit. So, for instance, if you want to stop eating after 7pm, doing extra cardio or depriving yourself of food is counterproductive and can lead to other issues.

Making a bet or putting money on something is a potential option. If, for example, you don’t stop the habit in a specific amount of time (and you’ll likely need to quantify that) you give your friend a certain amount of money. Or, you could owe your spouse $5 anytime you do the habit.

Whatever habit we’ve decided to break, we’ve already decided that there are long term consequences that we don’t like. But when we continue these habits, the long term negativity is hard to think about. Adding a short term negative consequence means we create a short-term negative consequence to discourage us.

The other idea to this is that ultimately we have to get through the initial difficult time with discipline and the motivation will catch up. We won’t have the same urge to continue the habit and we’ll see the benefits of having abstained.

A couple books they recommend are The Power of Habit, Thinking in Bets, & Atomic Habits

We all have things we think are important, we want to get done, but we continue to put off. This occurs because of the difference between urgent tasks and important tasks and the 4 different types of actions that occur (as an action can be urgent & important, neither urgent nor important, urgent but not important, or not urgent but important).

We tend to put off the important but not urgent things. If they’re never urgent, there’s never pressure to complete them. Ultimately, we need to put pressure on ourselves to complete them.

This doesn’t mean we ignore the urgent: the urgent has to get done. With the urgent, we have to find ways to be efficient or have others do these things (e.g. have the groceries delivered, have someone else mow the lawn). The important and urgent things have to get done. Items that are neither urgent nor important really need to be examined: how much value do you get, for example, scrolling through social media or binge watching Netflix. We need to eliminate or at least limit these activities.

All this requires, of course, identifying what’s important. This comes down to what provides us value. You decide what’s important.

This relates directly to strength training and dieting. Strength training is not urgent, though it’s important. We can increase the urgency by having accountability and protecting the space. Over time, we impart urgency on strength training, “It’s getting close to training time, I’ll have to do this later.”

The same goes for food. If eating is always urgent, then you’ll find yourself eating the most convenient items, which will usually be unhealthy. Preparation prevents food from being urgent, because you’re prepared and have food ready.

Lastly, completing the urgent is still important. If you have urgent things floating in your head when you’re attempting to get your important work done, you’ll be unable to focus and accomplish the important work you want to complete.

Matt & Chris share a technique they use all the time, called the Pomodoro Technique. This technique is perfect for both knocking out urgent tasks or carving out time to dedicate to deeper, important work.

The original approach is to dedicated 25 minutes to totally uninterrupted work followed by a 5 minute break. You can string together multiple blocks as you get better at this. Also, if you string together multiple blocks, you often need a longer break every so often.

25 minutes isn’t set in stone. You may need to do longer or even shorter blocks. The principle, however, is totally uninterrupted time. If you get distracted, you QUICKLY jot down a super short note to clear your head but ensure that the task that popped up in your head (e.g. I need to take out the trash) gets accounted for. With one hand, simply jot down “trash,” and then continue your work.

Preparation can help here. There might be certain times of the day or locations where this isn’t feasible because distractions will be inevitable. You also might need to do things to help prevent distractions: you may have to wear noise-cancelling headphones. You’ll need to have your phone elsewhere and not have notifications turned on. You might need to notify your loved ones that you need 25 minutes uninterrupted time and explain the purpose.

Ultimately, this is about getting the urgent things done so you can get the important things done, which include spending time with your family. You can, of course, apply this for important tasks, such as creative work.

Try the Pomodoro technique to increase your efficiency with both urgent and important tasks.

Let’s talk about focus. This is something people don’t do well these days. Focus has atrophied due to smartphones, social media, the internet, TV, etc. Focus, however, is critical to productivity, success, happiness, and getting done deep work.

Something that can help both improve focus but show you how hard it is to focus and how easily you get distracted is meditation. The practice of bringing your focus back to your breath or a mantra helps build the muscle of focus and helps you see your thoughts.

Also, you can’t multitask. You may move from one task to another relatively smoothly or quickly, but you can’t actually do two things at once.

Knowing what distracts you and blocking those things out helps. For many, distractions may be broken down into visual or auditory. Know which one distracts you and plan accordingly (noise-cancelling headphones, for example, if you’re distracted easily by noises).

More focus means more productivity, and if you value time with family and other activities, you can be more efficient with work and urgent tasks and then spend more time doing those things that are important and give you value.