How to Hack a Productivity Tool

+ a call for questions for the June Q&A

You can listen to an audio version of this newsletter above. Please note that this is unedited and I’m recording in my home office.

Before we get started, I want to share the ways we can work together.

I’m currently accepting new 1-on-1 coaching clients (10% discount for paid tending subscribers). I have capacity to take on two new clients in June. I’m booking workshops with universities and organizations for summer and fall. I’m offering my 6-week Intentionally Productive Scholars Program for undergraduates, and building a waitlist for Perceptible Progress: A Goals Course, which I plan to run in July. If you’re curious about any of these, reach out via email (Kate@KateHenry.com) or schedule yourself in for a free 30-minute chat with me. Thank you!

I’m collecting questions for the June Q&A!

Please submit them via a comment below or by emailing me Kate@KateHenry.com. Thanks!

Desktop covered by coffee and tools by Ian Dooley via Unsplash.

One of my favorite topics to teach is personalizing your productivity.

I often critique the one-size-fits-all approach of productivity “best” practices that assume everyone has the same dreams, support systems, access, and levels of personal resources to dedicate to their productivity. There are some great tools and approaches out there, and when we give ourselves permission to hack them to fit our lived experiences and our actual needs, good things can happen.

When I talk about hacking a tool, I mean taking what works for you and tweaking it to make it more accessible and fruitful for you. I guide my Success and Accountability Coaching clients through this practice in our calls, considering ways to make important-yet-challenging activities feel finally doable by shifting when, where, and how to approach the task.

I developed my own productivity hacking process when I researched and practiced hundreds of tools for my blog, The Tending Year, between 2018 and 2019. In that time, I got to learn what kinds of things do and don’t work for me. Some of the things that do work for me are gamifying, making blank space in my schedule, reserving a day out of my week for admin, and creating accountability through co-working. Some things that do not work for me are time blocking my whole day and scheduling meetings before 10am.

Here’s how I’ve worked to personalize my own productivity practices.

Learn about tools to identify whether they’d work for me.

When I was writing weekly blog posts in 2018 and 2019, I dedicated a few hours each week to learning how a tool was supposed to work. Once I knew what a tool’s general purpose was, I set up a little experiment to try it out then reflected on whether I wanted to add it to my toolkit. For example, the week that I wrote about Keeping a Dissertation Journal, I thought about what a journal could look like for me and why I’d want to use one.

What is a Dissertation Journal?

A dissertation journal is a place where you can keep track of your reflections, questions, or feelings about your dissertation and writing process. Most of the sources I read about keeping a dissertation journal praised its abilities to help jump start our brains out of writer’s block and build stronger and regular writing habits. Also, there are different purposes for journaling before, as a quick break during, and after dissertation writing sessions.

Why Keep a Dissertation Journal?

There are many reasons to keep a dissertation journal, such as:

• keeping a running record of your progress on key themes

• asking questions and answering them

• venting your frustrations, anxieties, or distractions

• reminding yourself of your strengths and your reasons for writing the dissertation in the first place

• pulling yourself out of writer’s block

• practicing writing without revising, which can help break down perfectionist tendencies

Once I identified the “what” and “why” for a Dissertation Journal, it was easier for me to practice using my own.

You can learn more about my Dissertation Journal process here.

If I choose to engage with the tools, adapt them to fit my lived experience.

Two years of weekly experimentation with productivity tools left me with a robust kit of approaches and skills. Some of the things I tried out ended up not being for me after all, but others were great and I’ve since woven them into my habits and my days.

One of the tools that I experimented with that stuck with me was routines, rhythms, and rituals. Here’s a quick overview of each one:

A Quick Debrief on the Three Rs

These three words are often used interchangeably, which is okay in my mind, because it is up to you to interpret what a particular action means to you personally. But for the sake of accessing each one’s particular meaning, I’ll describe them below.

Routine

How I would describe it: A part of the habit formation method, prompted by a cue and begetting a reward. Actions taken at the same time in the same way, repeated over and over, with a purpose of bettering your life.

A definition I like: “Habitual or mechanical performance of an established procedure.”

Rhythm

How I would describe it: Completing goals outside of predetermined timeline or order.

A definition I like: “Movement, fluctuation, or variation marked by the regular recurrence or natural flow of related elements.”

Ritual

How I would describe it: A ceremonial, mindful act that is tied to intention.

A definition I like: “The established form for a ceremony.”

Even though I love the rhythm approach the most, I find success with all three of these activities.

Some of my routines include filling out my bullet journal for the next week on a Friday afternoon, checking off tasks in my bullet journal when I complete them, holding co-working sessions for work, meeting with my Virtual Assistant on Monday afternoons, taking my medication in the morning and evening, going to yoga classes, and seeing my doctor every 10 weeks.

Some of my rituals include no-phone time with Kris when we play video games or go on walks together, reading novels in the bath, listening to fun podcasts while I cook, or scheduling phone dates with friends to catch up.

I prefer a rhythm approach to completing my tasks instead of time blocking my schedule each day. This looks like starting my day with a list of tasks in my bullet journal and choosing which to work on and how long to spend on them. Because many of my tasks are similar each week (drafting, revising, communicating with clients, coaching calls, updating my website, etc.), I’m able to estimate how long I need to spend on each one on a particular day. I like the openness of choosing when to do each task, but it does require me to reverse engineer my week and be careful not to schedule too many complex or challenging tasks for one day.

You can learn more about the magic of routines, rhythms, and rituals here.

Allow for things to shift as needed.

When I was in graduate school, I used the app Todoist. It worked well for me because it was on my phone, laptop, and watch, which meant I could always see what was on my to-do list for that day. Over time, I learned how to track invisible and behind-the-scenes labor tasks, limit my to-do tasks for a day to five things, and track which tasks I was most and least likely to accomplish. I am very motivated by gamifying a to-do list and I liked the way that Todoist aligned with my use of the must-do method. Once I finished my tasks for the day, I was free to do whatever I wanted and I did not need to work ahead.

When the Coronavirus Pandemic began and we went into lockdown, it made more sense for me to write a physical to-do list and keep it out on my desk. Since I was no longer working on campus or in coffee shops, I didn’t need to carry my to-do list with me anymore. It was easier for me to track my progress, and since I’d already built up my must-do muscles from using Todoist, I felt satisfied by checking off the boxes. While my season of using a virtual, portable to-do list has shifted, I’m grateful for the skills I learned that help me now with my bullet journal.

You can learn more about Todoist and other tools for mindful task tracking here, in one of my very first blog posts.

What about you?

Have you hacked any productivity tools to make them more accessible or fruitful for you? Respond via email or share in the comments!

Curiosities

This section of my letters is for things that made me say “hmmm” or “wow!” recently.

• I went to the local farmer’s market! I bought golden beets, bok choy, apples, and carrots and made a salad with a shitake sesame dressing. YUM.

• I signed up to be a Patreon for the podcast “You’re Wrong About” so Kris and I could listen to the Blair Witch Project episode last weekend when we drove home for seeing my in-laws. I’m also a paid subscriber for “Maintenance Phase” and “If Books Could Kill," which all exist in the same journalistic + cultural analysis + very funny podcast multiverse. Do you listen to any of these? What’s your favorite episode? I’ve got a lot of “You’re Wrong About” episodes to catch up on!

• I really enjoyed Charlene Storey’s post, “Seasonal Stories of Everyday Magic.” The descriptions of settings and memories are really beautiful, and I always love Charlene’s photos. It made me think about my own memories of being outdoors and smelling irises as a child and an adult.

For Your Consideration

• Follow me on Instagram

• Order my book, Tend to It: A Holistic Guide to Intentional Productivity

• Listen to my podcast interviews

xo,

Dr. Kate