How I Increased my Productivity 10x!!

The Problem

I don’t want to tell you X number of ways to improve productivity. I am sure you guys would have already read a tonne of them online. One of a great article is here.

For me, the top priority of being productive was time management. It required me to organize and prioritize my stuff. One of the best ways was to keep a todo list. I tried keeping it on Google Keep, Google Tasks etc. But I was never able to complete the tasks. In between tasks, I always lost the motivation or forgot the reason to complete them.

The Solution

One day I read about a concept called OKR. It stands for Objective and Key Results. Basically, you define your Objective , a clearly defined goal. Key Results are a set of metrics that measure your progress towards that Objective. Various organisations including Google, Uber, Linkedin use them at their workplace.

Example of OKR —

Objective: Create an Awesome Customer Experience

Key Results:

• Improve Net Promoter Score from X to Y.
• Increase Repurchase Rate from X to Y.
• Maintain Customer Acquisition cost under Y.

This what I exactly needed for my todo list —

There would be various Tasks under a Key Result and these Key Results aligning to my Objective. These can be written on papers or managed via the Google Docs. But I found a great online resource called www.okrtodo.com . I use it to fill in my OKRs and task.

This helped me categorise my tasks in a much better way. I always have the reason and motivation for a task in the form of a Key Result and Objective. And I could see my objectives being completed if I am able to complete all Key Results associated with it. I am always aligned with my goals in a much better way.

Demo

On this site, I could put my objectives, key results and tasks. I moved my whole task list here. Here is a screenshot of an early version of my list.

These are my objectives and key results while learning Node. okrtodo.com

These are the task associated with it. okrtodo.com

You can see I have my tasks so clearly aligned with my KRs. And the objective is quite clear “Become an Awesome Node Developer”. I can better visualise my tasks. I can mark these tasks completed. And I really suggest trying it for 21 days to make it a habit and you will see the change.

Another feature I wanted to see was to see the completed task. I contacted the guy and he said he would be willing to add if he sees more traffic. I really hope he adds it in the near future.

Thanks for reading! :)

Want to read more articles by me, here is the full list https://medium.com/@nimit95

You can follow me on twitter @nimit95 .