Give Me 12 Minutes and I’ll Give You 30 Years of Productivity Advice

If you want to get more done with less

time, this video is for you. Give me

just a few minutes and I'll give you

decades of productivity advice. You

know, I probably read more productivity

books than anyone you know. I'm an

author. I study this stuff and I

realized they all offer the same six

lessons and now I'm going to reveal them

to you. Lesson one, do less ruthlessly.

I can summarize the wisest productivity

advice of all in two simple words. Just

two words. Do less. Seriously, that's

it. The people who get the most done

don't do more things. They do fewer

things, but they do them better. So, be

ruthless about what you do. Here are a

few ideas. Limit your daily to-do list

to no more than five items. It's tough.

I know. I struggle with this, but when I

limit my list, I always accomplish more

and have a more satisfying day. On your

list of five, choose one and designate

it as your most important task, your

MIT. Do your MIT first. No exceptions.

Start it, finish it, and don't do

anything else. And when you're done,

you'll feel a sense of accomplishment,

and you'll have made progress toward

your most important goal. Next,

alongside your to-do list, make a toot

list. List three things that steal your

time, drain your energy, hijack your

focus, and don't do them. Things like

checking email first thing in the

morning, answering every phone call,

attending meetings that are a waste,

doom scrolling when you're stuck. Write

them down, post them where you'll see

them, and treat that list with the same

reverence with which you treat your

to-do list. Finally, for new requests

that come in, make no your default

answer. I know that's tough. We don't

always have full control over every

demand on our time or attention, but

give it a try. If no is your starting

position, you'll be forced to overcome

the default by thinking hard about

whether this next meeting, project,

opportunity, or request is worth your

time. Remember, getting more and better

work done isn't about addition. It's

often about subtraction. Here's a story

to help you remember. It's in many of

the books, including one of my own. The

legendary investor Warren Buffett once

had a conversation with this pilot. The

pilot felt styied, like he wasn't

achieving enough. So Buffett told him,

"Write down your top 25 goals." The

pilot did that. Then Buffett said, "Now

circle the five most important goals."

The pilot did that, too. Then Buffett

said, "Everything you didn't circle

goals 6 through 25, forget about them.

Avoid them at all costs. That's doing

less ruthlessly." The next tip shared in

almost every productivity book, it's

probably the most important. Protect

your golden hours. Everyone has a window

of time in their day when their brain is

sharpest. Protect that window like your

life depends on it. Because in some ways

it does. Carve out a few hours, ideally

early in the day for most of us for what

Cal Newport calls deep work. Work that

requires your full attention and

complete focus. Before you begin, make

sure your environment is free of

distractions. No meetings, no messages,

no open tabs. For me, when I have

serious writing to do, I don't open my

email. I leave my phone outside my

office. But that's nothing compared to

Maya Angelou, who rented a hotel room to

do her writing, unbothered and

uninterrupted from any other human

being. Once you've eliminated those

distractions, begin your golden hours

with the hardest task, the one you're

most likely to avoid. I feel like half

these productivity books quote Mark

Twain, who said, "If it's your job to

eat a frog, do it first thing in the

morning. And if it's your job to eat two

frogs, eat the biggest one first.

Science backs this up. Research from

Northwestern's Kellogg School of

Management has found that we get more

done and feel more accomplished, not

when we knock off a bunch of easy

things, but when we tackle the hardest

thing first. Another way to supercharge

this principle, know your chronotype.

That's your natural biological

relationship to time. Do you typically

go to sleep early and wake up early, or

do you naturally go to sleep late and

wake up late? If you're part of the one

in five people who are night owls, carve

out time much later in the day, even at

night for your deep work. The key for

you is to work when you work best, not

just when everyone else's schedule you

should. But again, for four out of five

of us, prime time is earlier, usually

first thing in the day. Here's one more

idea that comes up a lot. Time boxing.

That just means setting a start and a

stop time for a task. Say, "I'll work on

this report from 10:00 a.m. to 11:30

a.m." You give that task a container.

Then that structure can sharpen your

focus and limit drift. You've got a plan

for the big task, your MIT, and your

deep work, but you still got other stuff

to do, pesky things, smaller tasks that

always seem to clog the gears. What do

you do with those? That's easy, and it's

lesson three. Systematize the small

stuff. Think less, automate more. Here

are some ideas from these books on how

to clear the clutter. One, use the

2-minute rule. If something takes less

than 2 minutes, do it immediately. Don't

put it on a list. Don't overthink it.

Just get it done. I learned this from

David Allen, and no joke, it changed my

life. Another idea, stop multitasking.

You can't do it well. Nobody can do it

well. It doesn't work. Multitasking

makes you slower, sloppier, and more

stressed. So for the love of all that is

holy, just stop. Stop. Do one thing at a

time, finish it, then move on. A third

idea for clearing the clutter. Batch

like a boss. Stack similar tasks

together. Email, phone calls, errands,

admin. For example, I try to answer

email just a few times a day in a single

focus burst. No tab switching, no

notifications, just execution. Every

time you switch contexts, you lose time.

Backing gives you that time back. A

final way to clear the clutter, limit

your choices. We think more choices

leads to more happiness and better

outcomes, but as with the first

principle in this video, less is more.

And if you want to remember this point,

here's a super short anecdote that's in

a lot of these books. It's about Barack

Obama when he was president. Back then,

he wore only gray suits or navy suits.

That's all he had in his closet. Why?

Fewer decisions. I don't want to waste

brain power on what to wear, he said.

Even the most powerful people automate

the small stuff. Number four, track your

progress. Research from Harvard's

Terresa Amab has found that the single

biggest day-to-day motivator on the job

is making progress in meaningful work.

Not praise, not pay, not pressure, just

knowing that you moved something

forward. Progress. But here's the

challenge. We often don't see the

progress that we're making. We need a

way to notice it, to memorialize it, to

appreciate it. Here's the best, simplest

technique. At the end of each day, take

one minute to write down three ways you

made progress. Big or small, it doesn't

matter. The point is to see the movement

because if you see it, you're more

likely to keep going. These books also

tend to recommend two regular reviews.

Not every day, but every week. On

Mondays, ask yourself, "What's ahead?

What matters most? What are my

priorities?" On Fridays, ask how'd it

go? Where did I make progress? Where

could I have done better? That weekly

rhythm, just 5 minutes for each review,

adds up to something powerful. Momentum.

And if you need a story to lock in this

principle, several of these books

mention Pixar, the studio behind Toy

Story, Inside Out, and The Incredibles.

At Pixar, animators show their

unfinished work every day in what they

call dailies. Not to impress, just to

show progress. That steady feedback loop

builds accountability, a sense of

progress, and better work. Progress

matters, but you can't go nonstop all

day. That's why we have principle five.

Take strategic breaks. Let's move from

animators to violinists. In 1993, the

late Anders Ericson studied elite violin

players to find out what separated them

from their less accomplished peers.

These musical superstars practiced a

lot. I mean, that makes sense. But the

big surprise was that they also rested a

lot. They practiced in intense sessions,

often 90 minutes, and then they took

lots of breaks. A secret to their peak

performance wasn't that they grinded it

out all the time. It was the exact

opposite. They rested. They recovered.

So, here's another key finding in these

productivity books. Breaks aren't a sign

of laziness. They're a tool of

excellence. Brakes aren't a deviation

from performance. They're a component of

high performance. If you want to get

more and better work done, start being

hard-headed and ruthless. There's that

word again about taking breaks. We

weren't built for 8 hours of non-stop

effort. We were built for cycles.

Effort, recovery, effort, recovery. And

we know the best, most restorative

breaks that you can take. The design

principles, which I wrote about in my

own book called When are simple. One,

something beats nothing. Even a short

break is better than no break at all.

Two, moving beats stationary. Breaks

when we're in motion, say taking a walk,

are more effective than breaks when we

stay put. Three, outside beats inside.

The restorative effects of being in

nature, even in a city where you're just

seeing a few trees, are substantial.

Four, social beats solo. Breaks with

other people are more restorative than

breaks on our own. And that's true even

for introverts. And finally, fully

detached beats semi- detached. And

breaks as in deep work leave your phone

behind. Taking more breaks and better

breaks helps you refocus, reset, and

return stronger. These five tips all

lead us to the most powerful principle

of all. Number six, go for consistency

instead of intensity, habits instead of

heroics. If there's one thing these

productivity books quietly agree on,

it's this. The people who accomplish the

most aren't off the hook 247 maniacs.

No, they're people who do something

quieter and less dramatic. They show up.

They show up every day on time in the

chair doing the work. That means

shifting your mindset. Don't try to be a

hero. The person who pulls an

allnighter, powers through an 18-hour

workday, or finishes a week-long project

in one day. That's not sustainable, and

it usually produces worse work, not

better. Instead, build habits. Design

simple routines that make it easy to do

the important stuff without overthinking

or overexerting. James Clear calls this

casting votes for the kind of person you

want to become. I love that. Every day

you sit down and write, you cast a vote

for being a writer. Every time you close

your inbox and focus, you cast a vote

for being disciplined. And the research

backs this up. A 2020 study from USC

looked at how people build habits that

last. The biggest predictor of long-term

success, not motivation, not willpower,

not even rewards. It was repetition.

especially early on. The people who

stuck with their habits weren't the ones

who worked hardest. They were the ones

who simply showed up most often in the

first few weeks, even if it was just for

a few minutes every day. Small actions

repeated consistently outperform big

efforts done sporadically because

intensity exhausts and consistency

compounds. Don't burn bright and burn

out. Just keep going. No drama. Quietly,

deliberately every day. So, let's put

this all together. Want to get more

meaningful work done? Do less

ruthlessly. Protect your peak hours. Be

a machine with the small stuff. Track

your progress every day and every week.

Tweak breaks as performance fuel and go

for consistency instead of intensity.

Habits instead of heroics. That's it. 30

years of productivity advice distilled

to its essence. It's not fancy. It's not

complicated, but it works.