Hey :) 

Cara has said to me before that it’s incredible how much I can get done in a short space of time.

And she’s right.

When I focus and get into deep work mode, I can produce a lot very quickly. If I sit down with a clear project and no distractions, things tend to move fast.

But there’s a bit of a tension here for me.

Because at the same time, I kind of hate the idea of productivity. I even hate the word.

The way most people talk about productivity basically means getting more done in less time. Being efficient. Optimising everything.

But when you look closely at what actually happens, it’s a bit strange.

We invent technology to make things faster and easier… and then we just fill the time by doing more and more things.

Email gets faster. Messaging gets faster. Software gets faster.

And somehow we all just end up busier.

So productivity becomes this endless cycle of trying to get more done, instead of asking whether the work actually matters.

That’s the part I don’t like.

I don’t want to be productive.

I want to be effective. I want to be valuable.

Those are very different things.

I know I’m good at getting my head down and shipping things. I can tick boxes quickly. But I also know how easy it is to slip into busyness for the sake of busyness.

Busyness is almost like a disease. It’s always there trying to creep in.

And I’m constantly fighting against it.

What I actually want is much simpler.

I want to do the most important thing today.

And know that it was enough.

I often think about this as your 20%. Richard Koch talks about this. Cal Newport talks about deep work. Ben Hardy talks about spending your best energy on your highest-value work.

Different language, same idea.

The point isn’t doing more work.

It’s making sure the work you do actually matters.

For example, today I have one project I’m working on.

That’s it.

That’s probably the only work today I’d put in the category of actual work. Everything else is secondary.

But it's high leverage.

It will increase the long-term value of the company. It moves something forward that will compound over time. It requires thinking and skill.

Relative to most people’s day, that’s actually very productive.

Which is funny, because it doesn’t look productive at all. It looks slow. It looks quiet.

Two hours of focused work on one thing.

That’s it.

I also dislike the phrase time management for a similar reason.

It suggests the problem is how we manage time.

But I don’t think that’s the real issue.

The real issue is choosing the right work.

That’s much harder.

It requires thinking before acting. It requires stepping back and asking what actually matters today. It requires resisting the urge to just start doing things.

Some days you do need to just get busy and clear things off the list. That’s part of work too.

But most of the time, the real challenge is identifying the one thing that actually moves things forward.

And then doing that.

Two hours of deep, focused work on a single project that has real leverage.

Work that only you can do.

Work that makes the future better.

And if that’s the only meaningful thing you get done that day, then it was a very good day.

I think about this a lot in the context of my own work.

I could easily fill my calendar with clients.

I could spend every day working on other people’s businesses and make good money doing it. And for a while that’s exactly what you do.

But long term, that’s not the most effective work.

It’s valuable, yes. But it’s not the most leveraged work I can do.

My real job is to build a business that helps other people build their own businesses.

And when you look at it that way, you start to see a kind of ladder.

At the bottom you have one-to-one client work.

Then maybe group work.

Then coaching programs.

Then building the business itself.

As you move up that ladder, the leverage increases.

The stakes increase.

The impact increases.

And the work becomes less about doing more things and more about choosing the right things.

Which brings me back to the idea I keep coming back to lately.

Two hours of deep work on the single most important thing.

That might look like very little work from the outside.

But over a two or three year window, those are the things that actually build something meaningful.

🗣️ 👀

Chris.