Endless Monday Newsletter #1

Subtitle: Hmm. Today I will start a cynical corporate workplace advice newsletter.

Substack is the new Blogosphere. Any random person can make one and claim to be an expert. That is why I made a Substack newsletter, and then abandoned it in favor of Patreon because no one in my circles knows what Substack is.

Now you, the reader, can voluntarily get spammed by me, an expert, with emails about how to navigate the world of the corporate workplace, interspersed with doodles of my cartoon characters making funny faces. 

I expect to not update often. This is to demonstrate that I am actually very busy succeeding and thriving at my corporate workplace.

Today we will focus on the topic of "Staying Productive - How to maximize your value in service to your friendly corporation".

Staying Productive - How to maximize your value in service to your friendly corporation

Productivity is the single most important metric for a successful employee. How do we ensure we are making money for our companies, with high efficiency and minimal downtime?

First: Define what "Productivity" is

Is it lines of code written per day? The number of meetings you attended? The amount of newsletters you started? The number of times you pushed a button to fix the graph? The answer will vary from team to team. It is important to communicate with your manager on a regular basis to ensure you are optimizing for the metric that most visibly demonstrates that you are productive, so you can meet your KPIs for your annual performance review.

Second: Maintain a Getting Things Done (GTD) compliant task management system

This means you will need to learn org-mode in Emacs. If you are not using org-mode, are you even Getting Things Done?

Alternatively, you can use a notebook and make a to-do list every day. This is called "Bullet Journaling" and it's a good way to manage your tasks because it takes longer to set up than just doing the tasks themselves.

Third: Don't take on more work than you can reasonably handle

While many of us work best under crushing pressure, context switching between many tasks or projects is bad for productivity. Take on just enough work to feel stressed all the time, but not enough that you can't focus on your tasks. Until we are all automated out of our jobs, we must take care of ourselves, lest our bodies shut down and are unable to work productively for weeks or months due to burnout. This is bad for the company, and for your KPIs.

Paradoxically, this means learning to say no to people who want you to do stuff. This is a whole topic in itself and I'm too busy being productive to write it right now.

Fourth: Manage your time

Flitting between a dozen tasks will give you an excuse to complain about how busy you are all the time, but in the end you're not going to get a lot done. Instead, set aside a block of time to only focus on a certain task. This is, appropriately, called "Time Blocking." Once you finish the this task, move onto another task. Minimize context switching and distractions. Try using the Pomodoro method for this. There are a dozen apps available for Pomodoro tracking, but you can also buy a cute tomato timer if you want to go analog.

Fifth: Just do the work

Procrastination is the biggest enemy of productivity. Why are you avoiding your work? Do you not enjoy working here? Imagine if you had started that thing you had to do 4 hours ago. You'd have been done by now and starting another task, being more productive.

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Okay, I'm done. I hope this helps you become and stay more productive.

Stay tuned for more newsletters about succeeding in the workplace. What? You don't care about this stuff, you just want more cartoon characters making funny faces? Well I have good news -- I'm working on a bunch of stuff that are sure to interest you that I totally have started and am almost done with and was not avoiding doing by writing a newsletter.