Hustle culture has you fooled.

It’s fooled you into believing that to achieve more, you should do more. You should “hustle more” and “work harder”.

And so your days become one long battle of trying to complete endless to-do lists, getting overwhelmed and getting not even half the list done.

From years of personal experimentation, the secret to ramping up your productivity isn’t addition, it’s subtraction.

This reframe allows you to work smarter and better, rather than harder and longer.

You stop doing tasks that make you feel busy but don’t deliver results.

And thus focus on the things that make progress while having enough time for what matters.

Here are 4 ways to achieve more by doing less.

#1 Knowing What Not To Do

Most of us are great at creating to-do lists, but creating a long to-do list it’s optimal for efficient work.

We all have limited time and energy. The only way to have more time for what matters is by cutting unnecessary busy work.

You need to be focused on what matters and protect yourself from time and energy wasters.

Knowing what to avoid is just as important as knowing what to do.

And because productivity is about subtraction, let’s focus on what you need to stop doing.

You can do this by inverting a to-do list into a not-to-do list.

This is a list of the things you’ve decided not to do.

You’ve identified that they don’t align with your goals, waste your time, drain your energy and overall are distractions.

A few examples from my own life:

1. Do not worry about it being perfect.

2. Do not check emails constantly

3. Do not worry about stupid shit

4. No personal tasks during work

5. No work during family time

6. No coffee after 2 pm

7. Do not eat if bored.

#2 Prioritise High-leverage Work

Once you’ve gotten clear on what not to do, it’s time to focus on what truly matters.

The 80/20 rule (aka The Pareto Principle) tells us that “80% of the results come from 20% of the actions”,

In other words, only a few tasks account for the majority of the results.

If you’re not sure what your 20% is, you can use the $10K framework. It’s a simple process of identifying your highest-leverage tasks.

Grab your master task list and insert each task into one quadrant:

• $10 work. Replying to emails, creating your logo, or talking to unqualified prospects

• $100 work. Outsourcing simple tasks (that you should automate), or listening to an audiobook from your industry.

• $1,000 work. Planning and prioritising your day, delegating complex tasks, or acquiring a unique skill.

• $10K work. Recruiting for a senior position, creating systems and SOPs, selling to high-value customers

Now you know your highest-leverage activities.

You want to work on your $10k tasks before everything else. Then move down to $1,000 tasks.

#3 Close the Gap between Idea and Execution

If you’re into self-improvement and productivity, you might have noticed something emerging:

The obsession with learning and collecting.

• Learning the latest technique

• Collecting several books to read

• Learning the next hack

Collecting, learning, collecting, learning…

While learning and collecting information is great, information won’t change your life.

Action does.

There are hundreds of books, YouTube videos and courses that have all the information to help you achieve your goals.

While I love that more people are taking charge of their lives by learning and researching for themselves, most people's lives are still the same.

Why?

Because they aren’t taking action on the information they already have.

People aren’t obsessed with making progress, they are obsessed with looking like they are making progress.

Until you take action on the information you already have, your life isn’t going to get better.

Most people know how to lose weight i.e. be in a calorie deficit, reduce processed foods, exercise and get more sleep, but many are still overweight.

They aren’t applying the information.

If anything this constant chase of reading the latest books or listening to the latest podcast leads to analysis paralysis.

You might say, “I’m just looking for the best way to do XYZ.”

But if you aren’t doing any of the things you’re learning, how do you know what’s best?

Here’s the thing:

The person who reads one book and takes action on it makes more progress than the person reading 20 books and is onto their 21st book.

Information is nothing if it’s not acted on.

You make progress when you take action.

You learn more when you try something, get feedback, learn and try again.

This is learning in time, instead of “just in case”.

The fastest way for you to achieve more is to become action-biased.

Use what you have and know now and take action.

If it works, great.

If it doesn’t, try again or learn something else and try again.

But don’t learn for the sake of having information, learn to actually improve and make progress.

#4 Enter Deep Flow

The single habit that has changed my life and business is deep work.

Making deep work a habit allows you to learn this faster and produce better work in quality and quantity.

Deep work is what takes you away from busyness to real productivity.

Here’s how to make it a habit in your life:

1. Decide on the task you are going to work on.

This could be a project at work, research, a personal project, writing, content creation etc.

But you want to have one task you are working on.

Task switching or multitasking is what stops most from producing great work.

If you can’t go deep with the thing you’re working on, how will you make it good?

So ditch working on 5 things at once and commit to working on one thing at a time.

Context switching lessens our capacity to focus. Deliberate focus work, on the other hand, leads to the reinforcement of neural pathways.

2. Schedule your deep work blocks into your calendar.

Scheduling your work blocks into your calendar sends a signal to your brain that tells it, “This is important.”

And with that message, you are going to treat it that way.

You can decide how many hours you’re going to commit to it, but if you aren’t sure, I recommend a minimum of 90 minutes.

You see, your brain is only designed to work at peak performance for a limited amount of time.

90 minutes is typically how long your brain can maintain a highly focused cycle.

Follow this with a 10 - 30 minute break. You have to rest. Rest is as important for productivity as working is.

3. Remove distractions and build a routine.

We live in a world of distractions.

Your phone, emails, people, environment, etc.

All these make long uninterrupted work nearly impossible.
They make tapping into flow impossible.

Flow is the state of mind where you are fully immersed in the activity you’re doing. This is when you are your most focused, creative and productive.

But if you have distractions, you can’t get into flow.

So you have to remove any distractions so you can access flow on demand.

(If you have an in-depth guide to remove distractions, grab my 10X productivity guide here.)

To get into deep work and flow easily, you have to build a routine that minimises friction in getting started.

This could be like having a cup of coffee/ tea, a clear desk and a playlist of binaural beats. (this is my routine, by the way).

4. Deep rest

Earlier I mentioned how your brain can focus for around 90 minutes at a time.

After this 90-minute workblock, you want some downtime.

Rest is as important to productivity as work is, so be ruthless in protecting your rest.

Schedule a 20–30 minute block to rest into your calendar.

Also, this doesn’t mean mindlessly scrolling social media or watching Netflix.

You have to be intentional with your rest.

This could be as simple as getting a snack, some water or some short movement.

How to work smarter and not harder

To achieve more by doing less, you need to become more strategic about your time and work smarter rather than harder.

To do so:

1. Know what not to do

2. Prioritise your tasks using the $10K framework.

3. Close the gap between idea and action

4. Make deep flow a habit

Give one of these tips a try (or all of them for an elite performance system) and you’ll be surprised by the results.

— Shana

p.s. don’t forget to grab my free 10x Productivity guide here.

If you want 1-1 help building peak performance systems to reclaim 10+ hours of your time a week and 2-3x your output, book a free call with me, here.