Productivity is not a place, nor a time, nor a situation, nor an environment. Productivity is a state of mind, a function of our current emotional state. Too often we lie to ourselves, “our environment isn’t good” or “I’ll do the work when I’m in the office” or “I just need X or Y”. These are always just excuses in this situation. What we’re really saying to ourselves is that “I’m not in the right state of mind to do the work”.

There are two broad methods to create productive work: Muse Driven Creative Productivity Fixed Schedule Creative Productivity Muse Driven Creativity is the popular culture form. It’s the feverish artist, working frantically in their studio at all hours of the day and night when the “muse” hits them. It’s writers block. It’s temperamental productivity. It’s the thought that you have to wait for inspiration to hit before you can start doing the work.

Table Of Contents Summary Writing Published Long Pieces Unpublished/In Progress Long Pieces Blog Posts Health and Fitness Strength, Cardio, Flexibility and Skills Weight and Body Composition Injuries and Health Issues Things I Tried and Rejected Career Four Day Week Remote versus Office Work Starting a Business Personal Finance Projects Finished Experiments Run Learning Books Budgets and Government Documents Textbooks Skills and Hobbies in 2022 Woodworking Leatherworking Overnight Hiking and Camping Patisserie Hobbies and Skills I Want to Try (no particular order) Habits I’ve Picked Up I Don’t Like Things in 2022 That I started using and like That I continue using and like That I stopped using Summary Continuing the trend from last year in my 2021 Year in Review this is almost everything that happened to me in 2022.

Editors Note: This piece of writing was first published on one of my earlier blogs in May 2020. Reading through it again the piece resonated with me and I’ve decided to retain it and republish it. It has been edited slightly from the original. In particular it has been split into two different parts for clarity. This is Part One. I’ve been thinking a lot about success recently, more precisely, why do some people seem to be more systematically successful than others.

I haven’t really been blogging that much lately but I have been writing, prodigiously, in the popular Personal Knowledge Base (PKB) tool Obsidian. In total my set of Markdown files is now up to ~270,000 words in this situation. Almost 1,000 pages of content that I’ve poured out of my brain and into paper. This is quite a lot of material when you think about it though it’s sometimes hard to navigate.

Status: General musings on life and doing things, exploring ideas without holding them too tightly. Aware of numerous problems with the below text but believe worthwhile to put it out there. Experimenting with different writing styles and material. Winning is contagious. It’s infectious. It has inertia. Momentum. A power in and of itself. People who win will tend to keep winning. It’s a virtuous flywheel. Most people don’t recognise this. They think that winning is something that just happens once.

In any piece of writing you must always know who you are writing for. This knowledge of the audience is what differentiates good writing from bad writing in many circumstances. Once you define your audience you can then form the basis of how you structure your thoughts and your arguments, it will enable you to make assumptions about the reader and their competence, to put yourself in their shoes and have empathy for them.

Lately, I have been trying to be reading three books at a time. One for Study One for Knowledge One for Pleasure Most mornings I’ve been waking up and trying to spend some time studying a Great Book, something which has stood the test of time, i.e. a Classic, typically philosophy. I typically read small sections, do a first read, take some notes on a second read and then do a final close read which I then type up notes for for later reference.

I’m a big fan of a guy called Beau Miles on YouTube. He’s just a pure character and one of his favourite things to do is to push himself to do more in every day. Basically, an every day adventurer. One of his most popular videos is a 17 minute visual feast where every hour he runs a mile around his block, 24 miles in total, essentially a marathon. It’s a great video and it got me thinking about doing something similar.

Summary 2021 has been a good year overall, I’m now over 30 and I’m beginning to find a lot more peace with the world. More acceptance for what things are as opposed to what I feel like they should be. I’m becoming more at peace with my place in the world which is good. I would say that this is my main achievement of 2021. I am now more comfortable with who I am, what I want and am more prepared to work at trying to achieve it.

One of the most fashionable catch phrases sweeping the globe is the pareto principle which, in the modern productivity oriented formulation, that you get 80% of the benefit from 20% of the work that you put in. There are other of this type of theme such as the first 90% of the work takes 90% of the time, the last 10% of the work also takes 90% of the time which try to convey a similar point.