In many product design teams today, work is divided neatly into fields. The result is a familiar waterfall process, where strategy leads to UX, UX leads to UI, UI leads to “finished” designs, and only then does engineering begin.

One cost is that the work is slow. Product teams struggle under the weight of these processes and, at worst, end up filling their time completing checklists instead of doing impactful work.

Plan like a farmer by being deliberate about planning. A farmer has a clear goal (grow the best apple), but knows it is impossible to predict the weather. Instead of laying out a rigid plan ahead of time, they stay agile and respond as things happen.

The method is to get in the habit of starting everything immediately and chunking it out so you finish early. Doing this repeatedly trains your brain that work is like taking a nice rewarding warm bath rather than briefly touching a painful punishing hot stove. Over time your brain learns to enjoy work and its rewards more than it fears the pain of doing it. I call this method “work ethic psychological conditioning” (WEPC) because I didn’t have a name for it and that’s just what I came up with on the spot for this article. I elaborate on WEPC below, and give an important optimization to the method.

Negative engineering is the time-consuming and sometimes frustrating work that engineers do to ensure small bugs don't take down systems.

There were no warnings or red lights, because the process simply hadn’t run in the first place. And so a new, time-consuming activity was added to the data analytics stack: manually checking the database each morning to make sure everything had functioned properly.

Negative engineering is “insurance as code”

Negative engineering is the time-consuming and sometimes frustrating work that engineers undertake to ensure the success of their primary objectives.

Writer Jenée Desmond-Harris on how to divide your to-do list:

“I started dividing my to-do list into
1) things I have to do
2) things I want to do
3) things other people want me to do.

Life changing! I often don’t get to #3 and I finally realized… this is what it means to have boundaries.”

A Most Important Task (MIT) is a critical task that will create the most significant results. Every day, create a list of two or three M.I.T.s, and focus on getting them done as soon as possible. Keep this list separate from your general to-do list. - The Personal MBA

Adopt the 1–3–5 method to create and manage your action list for the day
On any given day, assume that you can only accomplish one big thing, three medium things, and five small things, and narrow down your to-do list to those nine items.

This means that your daily schedule will feature:

1. One very important task;
2. Three tasks of medium importance
3. Five little things

Planning tomorrow today is a powerful habit that changes everyday.

It’s a system that can completely changes how you work:
Before the day ends, identify and write down the best actions (to-do) you need to take tomorrow that will help you get closer to your work goals.
Every morning, focus on completing your action list from yesterday before midday.

When I catch myself procrastinating, I take it as a positive opportunity to reassess what I’m doing.

1-What do I need to do? (Specific and in detail.)

2-Why do I need to do it? (Again, specific and in detail.)

Becoming evolved means:
You no longer major in minor things — As Jim Rohn said, “A lot of people don’t do well simply because they major in minor things.”

You value your time — and how that time is spent. When you’re at work, you’re 100% at work. When you’re at home, you’re 100% at home. You begin living in the “results-economy,” where you’re less worried about how long something takes you, and you’re more concerned about achieving the your desired results more effectively and efficiently.

I call this planning method time blocking. I take time blocking seriously, dedicating ten to twenty minutes every evening to building my schedule for the next day. During this planning process I consult my task lists and calendars, as well as my weekly and quarterly planning notes. My goal is to make sure progress is being made on the right things at the right pace for the relevant deadlines.

I came in from my 10-foot commute once and my 3-year-old looked up from his snack and said, “What did you make today, papa?”

It took me by surprise, as I had always assumed that when I was out of sight I was out of mind. (I now know that children seem to be most interested in you when you’re not around. When you’re actually around, they love to ignore you.) “No, he asks about you all the time,” my wife said. “He always wants to know what you’re doing. I tell him, ‘Papa’s out in his studio making things.’”

By Charles Duhigg
Four years ago, when I began working on a book about the secrets of productivity, I had a hidden motivation: I wanted to figure out how to eat dinner with my kids.