This one habit can double your productivity

One habit that can double your productivity, and it's a surprisingly simple habit, one that’s easy to overlook and underestimate: A power hour. 

Set a power hour in your daily life routine. After getting up early in the morning, before doing anything else, find a nice quiet place without phone and without anyone else around and work on the most difficult and impactful project of your life. In a world of shiny new apps and “scientifically-backed” hacks, the power hour looks quite plain, but this very plainness is a virtue. In the Tao Te Ching, a classic book of wisdom, Lao Tzu writes, “Trifles and dainties attract the passing people, while the Tao goes unnoticed. When looked at, there is not much to see”. And he also said, “The great way is very plain, so the proud prefer the bypaths.” The power hour is not much to look at, but out of all the apps, tips and tricks, we try many other things as a student, a working professional, and an entrepreneur, nothing can be more effective than the power hour. You just need to slice an hour out of each day and make actual progress towards your goals.

Everyone has goals, but how many people actually act on them? Everyone wants to make a great journey, they want to make money, get their dream job, graduate with honors, invent something, create something, and be someone. Everyone wants to  arrive at a great destination, but how many people actually want to take a step towards that destination? How many people spend most of their time preparing to make a journey that they never embark on? How many of them look for the right clothes, the right bag, the right level of motivation, the right video, the right song, the right words, the right tools or the right time? Instead of looking for the right time to be productive, the power hour will force you to be productive at the right time.

Do you have a lot of things to think about? Well, you should think about them after the hour is over.  

Do you have lots of relationships to maintain? You should deal with them after.

Do you have multiple projects to work on? You should get started with the most important thing to work on during the power hour.

Do you procrastinate? One hour is easy enough to do each day, and you can relax after. Do you get tired in the evenings? You  should  schedule your power hour first in the morning, when you have the most energy. The power hour solves the greatest obstacle to productivity: inaction. The mind finds clever ways to not take action, and the mind’s most clever secret is productive procrastination. It doesn’t tell itself that it's being inactive. Rather, it finds things that are pseudo- productive to do and takes pleasure in doing them. The mind wants to clean the house before working or it wants to manage its to-do list or it wants to organize its computer or notion folders. It wants to make templates and spreadsheets. It wants to answer emails.  It wants to set up a new app or calendar. It wants to do a little reading before working. It wants to find the right music. It wants to get the desk set up properly with all the right tools. It wants to  find a productivity video to watch first. But the mind can create an infinite number of tasks and problems for itself.

How many folders should there be on the desktop? How should those folders be named? How should we organize them within each other? What should each folder contain? How should we tag each folder? And this can go on forever, with anything. The mind loves to productively procrastinate. It gets the pleasure of working without having to actually do anything. The mind loves to sit around sharpening its axe, but it never wants to hack at the tree. The power hour is a commitment to take the axe as it is and start chopping. The sharpening of the axe, the gathering of other tools, working on other things around the house, can all take place after. But for the first hour, you should do nothing but chop at the tree. You should directly go to the most pressing problem in your life, and you’ll find the most difficult, most impactful action that might solve it and you should do that.

Steve Jobs once said, “ focus is about saying no”. The first hour of your day should be sacred, solitary, reverent, unadorned, and above all it’s all saying no. There are no incense, or special teas, or meditations, or cold showers, or quick body workouts. No millionaire or billionaire morning routines that never actually amount to anything. No productive distractions. No productive procrastination. Just you, your axe and the tree.