Background
We are here to pursue an ambitious shared mission and solve the problems of patients, providers, and payers at scale. And if we want extraordinary outputs, we need extraordinary inputs. We need a dream team performing at its peak. And to be a dream team, we need a bunch of great individual players. If we push ourselves individually to do the best work of our lives, we can each achieve our personal career goals, learn a lot, and have fun while improving lives through pursuing our team Mission & Vision & Success. And we can win. It’s fun to win.
We each need to individually strive to be the best at our position, or we are letting the team down. To do so, you have to find out what individual habits to maintain that will make you world-class at sustaining a high level of output over a long period of time. That means something different for everyone. Figure out what works for you to avoid burnout. Prioritize your health, both physical and mental. Invest in the relationships that are important to you. The answer is personal — whatever it is, figure out what moves the needle for you and do it. You owe it to yourself and the team to be excellent.
Tactical Tips
Collecting individual productivity tips and philosophies.
- Clean out your inbox every day (Email, Slack, etc.). Hit “inbox zero”. Batch when you go through messages (perhaps once at the start of the day and once at the end of the day) and don’t stop until it’s clear.
- Take advantage of our insurance — see a dietitian; see a therapist.
- Protect your calendar ruthlessly so that you can focus on the Top Goal.
- Speed is a virtue — have a sense of urgency. Always ask why something couldn’t be done sooner.
- [Be a Bayesian thinker. Think probabilistically.](https://towardsdatascience.com/on-the-importance-of-bayesian-thinking-in-everyday-life-a74475fcceeb#:~:text=This is the so-called,happen is also a probability.) Test and learn. [Update your priors.](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/04/science/coronavirus-bayes-statistics-math.html#:~:text=In stats lingo%2C “priors”,a coherent accumulation of knowledge.)
- Keep a to-do list to stay organized so that nothing slips through the cracks. I recommend Todoist, but the exact system is less important than having a system.
- Be 80/20 — prioritize. Don’t sweat the little stuff.
- Schedule 25 and 50 min meetings so that you have time to take breaks before your next meeting. This will allow you to be on time and present, as per How We Meet (Or Not). End meetings early if you don’t need the full time.
- Batch meetings back to back for efficiency. Batch similar meetings and tasks to minimize context switching.
- Try to be the best in the world at your role. Sounds banal but is actually profound — it takes a fundamentally different approach to be extraordinary rather than ordinary. Plus higher expectations are inherently valuable.
- Think from first principles.
- Give people the benefit of the doubt. Assume positive intent. Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence.
- Narrow the focus, up the quality, move faster.
- Turn off notifications on your computer that are pop-ups so you don’t constantly get distracted. Stack meetings together back-to-back rather than intermittently throughout the day so that you can have large, uninterrupted blocks of time for deep work. The goal is to get into flow for long periods of time while working on the highest priority items, aka your Top Goal. I recommend brain.fm as something to listen to while in deep work.
- Checkout ‣ and ‣.