What’s the role of effort? Effort is quite an important topic cause a lot of our up-and-down struggles with productivity come from it.

To put it simply, for most types of work you can increase your output, without increasing your hours, by upping the intensity of your work. No more coffee corner chats. No more lingering over emails before getting on with the new tasks.

Just put in a relentless focus on deep work (in my tips for most productive mornings, I spoke about this ‘concept’ before. And so I found out that this ‘working deep’ usually works.
Main reason being that we’re rarely working at our absolute maximum level of effort, so that we can often squeeze more productivity out of our day by upping the intensity!

Cal Newport recommends time blocking, which he argues makes about a 2x factor in the amount he’s able to get done. But, at the same time, he’s frank about the intensity—scheduling every moment of your working day is time consuming.

I tend to lean on the side of working intensely. An intense schedule almost always beats a long schedule for accomplishing the same work, allowing me to keep evenings and weekends free. Who does not want that😊!