Aggregate Tasks and Build Momentum

There are two under appreciated ways to improve your productivity: aggregation and momentum.

Like Work

If you need to make cold calls, doing all the research at once is more effective than doing that same research between calls. By aggregating that work, you focus on a certain type of work, the work of seeking answers to questions you ask yourself before you make a call. Then, you aggregate your calls. By making all your calls together, you get more work done faster.

You might also aggregate work like email and voicemail. You can keep your inbox shut for hours, open it long enough to respond to anything urgent (which is more rare than you might believe), and then save the emails that don’t require an urgent response for a time that makes more sense. I like to respond to email on Wednesday and Saturday mornings, if it is something that doesn’t require an immediate response (you don’t get paid for responding to emails or getting to Inbox Zero).

If you want to be super productive, aggregating your work will help you do more, and it will allow you to do more in less time.

The Big, Big Mo

If you want momentum, do one task for a long period of time. There is something about giving yourself over to a single task that produces a flow state. In that state, you and the work become one, and you get more work done than you imagined. The time passes without you noticing.

Aggregation is what allows you to build momentum.

Back to cold calling. If you want to get really good at making calls, make a lot of calls in a row. With every call, you will get better. Your confidence will grow. After a full day of calls, you will be most effective. You can’t get the benefits of momentum when you are always switching tasks.

I recently got rid of my giant monitors, and now I do everything on a laptop. I have one window open when I am writing. I have one window open when I am editing videos for the YouTube channel. I have two windows open when I process email, but the second window is only open so I can move tasks to Omnifocus, my task manager.

Focus is the discipline of the super-productive.

If you want to get more done, aggregate your work, and focus on one task so that you can build momentum.