The Surprisingly Best Productivity Hack

I love productivity hacks, and I’m constantly on the lookout for tools, techniques and strategies that can help me, my coaching clients, our podcast listeners and viewers, and everyone who subscribes to my newsletter or reads my blog.

In today’s world of advanced technology, there are many, many tools that help us to do things faster, better, and more effectively. These tools help us to track information, remind us to do what we want and need to do, and report on how effectively we’ve accomplished what it is we want to do.

Over the years, I’ve also read dozens of books in the area of personal productivity. There are books on time management, developing habits, prioritization, and many other topics.

Integrating productivity tools into our lives can be a game changer. Imagine trying to drive a nail into a piece of wood without a hammer. Or trying to cut a piece of copper pipe without a saw. Productivity tools have that same effect, and help us to get things done.

Today, I want to share with you the single most important tool I use in my productivity arsenal: a legal pad.

Yep, a good, old-fashioned legal pad. I prefer yellow, but they come in white, too.

I’ve tried several different methods of keeping track of things to do. Software programs have been created to make us more efficient and effective. An Excel spreadsheet seems like an advanced technology for this purpose.

And yet nothing – and I mean nothing – has been more effective in helping me to get things done than a legal pad and pen.

Here’s how it’s worked for me over the last couple days.

I was heading into the weekend, and had a number of things I wanted to accomplish – both personally and professionally. As I thought of those things, I wrote them down on a single sheet of my yellow legal pad.

Once I had written everything down that I wanted to accomplish, I went through the list, and decided on the three most important things I wanted to get done. I made this decision based on the question, “If I could only accomplish three things on my list, what are the three I would want to accomplish?” I wrote about this strategy in a previous article, entitled, “Two Powerful Success Tools.”

The most amazing thing happens after I create a list like this. I’ve observed it time and time again, over many years. Simply by having this list – and having everything I want to do written down on paper – I complete the items on my to-do list. Faster, easier, and with greater predictability than if I was using an Excel spreadsheet or other tool, or certainly if I hadn’t invested the time creating this list at all.

Good old-fashioned paper and pen. Who knew? I think we get so caught up sometimes in wanting the “latest and greatest” technology that we overlook the simplest and most effective strategies. 

Don’t get me wrong, computers are great, and enable us to do things that would not otherwise be possible. Same with apps, and wearables, and other tools that have been introduced into our lives.

But for me, anyway, this is one example of a simple, old-fashioned, non-technology tool being far more effective than any comparative technology. 

If you want to knock out your to-do’s faster than a hot knife through butter – which is how I describe the effectiveness of this legal pad method – then give this a try and let me know how it works for you.

Please share what tools you use to help you be more successful, too. Like I said earlier, I’m always looking for better tools for my toolbox. I hope you are, too.