With that in mind, here are the four ways I know of for getting more enjoyment from a positive moment without changing the circumstances of that moment:

1) Gratitude. Think about the fact that you have this nice thing, that there is a possible world where you don’t have it, and aim to feel thankful for having it. For instance, if you’re enjoying a cup of tea, you can remind yourself how nice it is to have tea whenever you want, and how much more difficult it was to acquire tea hundreds of years ago.

2) Presence. Try to pay as much attention to the present moment as you can. For instance, rather than being 20% focused on what you’ll be doing later, or having stray thoughts about something else while you’re sipping your tea, focus fully on the experience of your tea.

3) Focus. Narrow your focus from this full moment to the very best aspects of this moment. For instance, focus on the tiny spot in your mouth where the tea tastes most delicious.

4) Acceptance. Stop resisting *everything* that’s imperfect about this moment. If we pay close attention, we can usually find something about any moment that feels imperfect, and it’s that desire for things to be different and that label assigned to aspects of this experience (that things aren’t what you want) that you’re letting go of. Relax all judgment and accept every last detail about this moment without wanting any aspect of it whatsoever to change. When your brain labels something as imperfect, or you notice a desire for something about this moment to change, note the thought or desire and let it go. For instance, fully accept that your face is slightly itchy, that you’re seated in a slightly awkward position, and that your tea tastes exactly as it does, without wanting those aspects of this moment to be any different. One way to do this is to think of this moment as a perfect snapshot of a moment in your life – and you want that snapshot to be exactly as it is to capture this exact moment, not a snapshot of a different moment.

Are there any other approaches to enhancing positive moments that I’m missing here?

This piece was first written on December 24, 2025, and first appeared on my website on January 12, 2026.

I’ll start with Circling itself, for those who are not familiar. Note: if you plan to try any of these, be careful and make sure everyone involved knows what rules will be used (in advance) before they agree to participate. For all of these, I’d suggest stating a time limit up front and using a timer to end it at that time (of course, when the timer goes off, the group can decide to do it again if they want).

(1) Circling: a group conversation where the topic of the conversation is limited to what’s happening right now, during the experience itself. As Duncan Sabien explains it: “‘Circling’ is a special kind of conversation, in which the topic of the conversation is the subjective experience of the conversation, as it’s happening., i.e., the thing you are all talking about is what it is like for each of you to be present in the conversation as it unfolds. What you’re noticing, what you’re feeling, the impressions and stories you have of the other people, the shifts in your own physical and emotional state. You take the flurry of second-to-second thoughts, feelings, and reactions that would normally shape and inform what you would say next, and instead just talk about them directly, e.g., “Oh, huh—while I was listening to what you just said, I noticed I felt an impulse to [whatever].”

—

(2) Hot Seat Circling: like circling, but the focus of the conversation and attention is one pre-determined person who sits in the middle. (This is a known variant of Circling, not something I came up with.)

—

And here are my brainstormed ideas for alternatives:

(3) Clear-ing: everyone sits quietly and clears their mind. Each person tries to notice the very first thought that pops into their mind, and then says it aloud to the group. Then the group resets and does it again (I suggest doing this only for a short amount of time – say, 5 minutes).

—

(4) Past-ing: the focus of the conversation must be on the past only. For instance, “Hearing you say that, I’m reminded of a time when…”

—

(5) Future-ing: the focus of the conversation must be on the future only. For instance, [in response to what someone else said] “That reminds me that I hope to one day…”

—

(6) Echo-ing: the focus of the conversation must be the last thing that was said. You start by repeating (or summarizing what the other person said), and then you react to it (and the next person repeats what you said and reacts to it, and so on).

—

(7) Feelings: the only topic of the conversation is the feelings or emotions of attendees. It can be their current feelings, past feelings, or feelings in response to feelings, etc.

—

(8) Role-ing: each person in the circle has only one thing they are allowed to do. Every 5 minutes, the roles rotate so that participants get to play different roles:

Role 1: You can only express how you feel or what emotions you’re having.

Role 2: You can only express your cognitive/analytical thoughts about what’s happening right now.

Role 3: You can only ask questions (but people must still stay within their role to try to answer).

Role 4: The only thing you can do is guess what you think others are thinking or feeling.

Role 5: The only thing you can do is ask others to elaborate on what they said.

Role 6: You’re doing normal circling (i.e., you can only talk about what’s happening here and now, but you can talk about any aspect of it that you want).

With smaller or larger groups, you can decide which roles you want and how many of each. You can also have a visual marker in front of each person to indicate what role they are in.

An alternative to Role-ing would be that everyone is in the same role at the same time (e.g., everyone starts in Role 1), and every 5 minutes, everyone switches to the next role.

—

(9) Weird-ing: you can only talk about things that normally would not be said, or that normally would be unusual, odd, awkward, or inappropriate to talk about.

—

(10) Limit-ing: it starts as a normal conversation. Every 5 minutes, someone suggests a new type of thing you’re not allowed to talk about or a new constraint on conversation (e.g., “you can’t talk about the future” or “everything you say must be at least slightly vulnerable”), then there is a vote. If accepted by a unanimous vote, it gets added to the list of rules (if not, someone else proposes a rule, going around the circle until a rule is accepted by a unanimous vote). If no rule is accepted, then continue for 5 more minutes with no new rule additions. Each time a new rule is added, it gets written on a piece of paper or whiteboard that everyone can see, so it’s clear what all the rules are. Each voting round starts with the person after the one who proposed the last accepted rule.

—

(11) Squaring (Sam Rosen’s alternative): “Squaring is also an authentic relating game, but it’s less focused on the here and now. It’s about focusing on and discussing true dynamics that exist between people through time. Some examples of squaring would be:

• Hey, I am surprised we aren’t closer friends. Do you know what’s going on there?

• I notice you plausibly deny flirting with my girlfriend. And it’s not a big deal, and I still love you, but I’d like it if you did it slightly less.

• In our past conversations, I’ve felt you weren’t that curious about what I had to say. Am I imagining this, or am I actually boring you?

• I think you are really insightful, and I don’t think you get enough credit for that, so here’s me giving you credit.

In squaring, you should try to give people your best model of yourself. You should focus on the information you think would be useful to the person you are talking to.”

This piece was first written on August 2, 2025, and first appeared on my website on September 29, 2025.

[Note: I’ve updated this post based on some feedback in the comments I received when I first wrote it.]

1. ADHD Focused Temperament

Since a core aspect of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) involves difficulty regulating focus, which may manifest as challenges in choosing what to focus on, and may involve hyper-focusing on a particular thing without feeling there’s a choice, an aspect of Focused Temperament would be finding it easy to focus on whatever you choose, and finding it easy to focus with whatever degree of intensity you choose. 

Since restlessness and fidgeting are other common symptoms of ADHD, Focused Temperament would involve finding it easy to still while doing nothing.

2. Schizophrenia Grounded Temperament

Since a core aspect of schizophrenia is seeing connections between things that aren’t really connected, an aspect of Grounded Temperament would be avoiding such false positives, but also failing to see hard-to-spot connections between things that really are connected. Since it’s common for schizophrenia to involve paranoia, Grounded Temperament would involve an absence of conspiratorial thinking and a tendency not to impute negative motives.

3. Imposter Syndrome Poster Syndrome

Since a core aspect of Imposter Syndrome is the belief that others see you as more capable than you really are, an aspect of Poster Syndrome would be a belief that others see you as less capable than you really are.

4. Autism Spectrum Social Savantism

Since a common aspect of being on the Autism Spectrum is having trouble spotting or interpreting subtle social cues, an aspect of Social Savantism would be an unusually strong ability to process and make accurate inferences from all subtle social information in interactions and to respond so as to produce the exact impression intended.

5. Borderline Personality Unreactive Personality

Since some of the major aspects of Borderline Personality are a high intensity and variability of emotion, an aspect of Unreactive Personality would be having dulled emotion with little fluctuation. Other aspects of Borderline Personality are a lack of sense of self/core identity, along with a strong attachment to others to root one’s identity to, so Unreactive Personality would involve a stable sense of self with unusually low attachment to others.

6. Sociopathy Selfless Personality

Since major aspects of sociopathy are a lack of (or greatly diminished capacity for) compassion and empathy, an aspect of Selfless Personality would involve extremely intense empathy and compassion, with these emotions driving an unusually large amount of the person’s actions.

And as a bonus, here’s one by John Nerst:

7. Nerd Wamb

Nerst describes a Wamb like this:

“Wamb is a vernacular label, not a scientific one, but it’s usually earned by a love for activities that are social and physical rather than intellectual — football, dancing, or socializing rather than learning, building things, or playing games. The leisure activities we associate with wambs — team sports, gossiping and partying — all depend on primal instincts like competition, alliance building, and mating, and tend not to involve intellectually complex exchange with others or the physical world.”

If you’d like to learn more about your own personality, you can take the ultimate personality test here, which gives MBTI-style, Big Five and Enneagram results all in one test.

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This piece was first written on January 7, 2023, and first appeared on this site on January 28, 2023.

Note: here, I use the term “success” merely in terms of achievement, career success, or high levels of expertise, NOT in terms of happiness, living a good life, morality, having strong social bonds, etc. There is nothing wrong with not wanting to be successful in the way this post focuses on. But if you DO want “success” in the sense in which it is used in this post (or you are interested in being able to predict it in others), you may find some of the models here useful.

I’m also interested to know: which model (below) do you find most useful for thinking about success, and which one of these factors (used in the models) do you think is currently most limiting your success?

1. Noise theory:

success = luck

2. Genetic determinism:

success = (innate) aptitude + luck

Note: whenever I use “luck,” I mean random factors not already accounted for in the other factors in the model. So in the case above, “luck” means luck other than the random chance of what your aptitude is.

3. Traditional right:

success = aptitude + surrounding culture + hard work

4. Social justice left:

success = privilege + luck

5. Economic left:

success = social/economic class you’re born into + luck

6. Cynical theory:

success = some combination of self-promotion, bullshitting, social skills, good-lookingness, starting resources, and luck

7. Gladwell: 

success = whoever practiced for 10,000 hours + luck

8. Dweck: 

success = aptitude + growth mindset + luck

9. Duckworth: 

success = aptitude + growth mindset + grit + luck

10. Seligman: 

success = skill * effort * self-promotion * luck

11. Psychometrics: 

success = IQ + conscientiousness + low neuroticism + luck

12. Ericsson: 

success = luck + hours spent doing “deliberate practice” (i.e., with specific goals and tight performance feedback loops, while analyzing mistakes and dividing skills into micro-skills that can be practiced independently, ideally all done under the supervision of expert coaches)

13. My mega model:

success at a fixed goal = luck^a

* (resources+opportunities)^b

* (community/collaborator quality and supportiveness)^c

* (innate aptitude at relevant skills)^d

* intelligence^e

* rationality^f

* (creativity and resourcefulness)^g

* (social skills)^h

* (hours of deliberate practice)^i

* (unitary or obsessive focus on the goal)^j

* (conscientiousness and self-control)^k

* (physical or mental health)^l

* confidence^m

* (ambition and agency/self-directedness)^n

* (self-promotion skill and effort)^o

* courage^p

* (goal/task-specific factors)^q

* (efficiency and prioritization)^r

Each exponent a, b, c, …, r is a different number from 0 to 1. Note that each of these traits is selected because I believe, on average, having more of them improves the chance of success – that’s why I exclude negative exponents. Furthermore, I’m claiming that these factors, on average, each have diminishing marginal returns. That’s why the exponents are each less than 1 (making a concave function).

The values of the exponents vary depending on the field and type of skill. For instance, in some areas, courage is a minor factor (in which case the courage exponent, n, would be close to 0, and in other fields, courage is essential, in which case n would be close to 1). So, in other words: success is a PRODUCT of roughly 18 factors, and how much each factor matters depends on what you’re trying to do.

Note that this is designed so that if you have literally 0 of any factor, then the level of success is automatically 0 (since 0 times any number is 0). For instance, if you have literally no physical health, you are, presumably, dead, and if you have literally no ambition, presumably you just sit around all day or do the minimum you need to eat.

It’s worth noting that the factors above are not completely statistically or causally independent in reality (becoming higher in one may make you higher in another, on average). But I think the enormous extra complexity of trying to account for these dependencies probably is not worth it in practice.

How do you improve your odds of success?

A lot of times, when people are extremely successful, I think it’s because they avoid being TOO low in any of the factors, and they have one or two factors where they are exceptionally high. Many factors are “bounded” ones: for instance, you can’t work more than 24 hours per day. So it’s impossible to work more than 3x the amount the average person does. But there are some “unbounded” factors where you can potentially be WAY higher than the average person (e.g., “creativity”), which can drive the success score very high (as long as no other factor is close enough to zero to drag it back down). Hence, this model leads to an approach for thinking about how to be more successful (if that’s something you care about).

Put simply, success often flows from not being TOO weak on really important factors and having one or two really strong (and relevant) strengths.

Getting into more detail, here is a process you might use to consider how to increase your odds of great success:

1. For the goal/task you’re trying to succeed at, figure out which of the above factors matter substantially (which maps onto trying to – very roughly – figure out the exponents for each factor).

2. If your strong/weak factors are not a good fit for the goal, consider changing the goal to better play to your strengths, or consider teaming up with someone (e.g., a co-founder) to compensate for your weaknesses.

3. Once you have settled on a goal, identify any especially low factors (relevant to that goal) that are driving your potential for success down, and think about how you can improve at those. Due to multiplicative effects, very low factors can really drag down your potential for success. For instance, if you have severe mental health challenges that interfere with your day-to-day tasks, working on that first can be a great idea (even if you’re just optimizing for success).

4. Identify your strongest factors (that are relevant to that goal) and think about how you might improve at them or hone them to get them VERY high. You can also figure out how to make even more use of these great strengths of yours to achieve good outcomes. Often, one of the most effective things we can focus on is leaning into our greatest strengths (for instance, by designing a path towards our goals that leverages them or working to enhance them even more). This is especially the case once we’ve gotten barriers to success out of the way (i.e., we’ve worked on improving our especially low factors).

A question for you: right now, which of the factors listed above is the one that is most significantly limiting your success?

This piece was first written on September 12, 2021 and first appeared on this site on March 25, 2022.

A. FOCUS

1. Attention: focus on every detail of the experience much more intently than normal.

Ex: with each bite, notice as much as you can about the flavor and texture

Ex: try to hear every distinct instrument in the music as it comes in and fades out

2. Savoring: try to extend and enhance enjoyable moments by using “metacognition” – become aware of how much you’re enjoying the thing and how great you feel it is, even as you’re experiencing it.

Ex: remind yourself what an awesome conversation this is that you’re having right now and how deeply connected you feel to your friend

Ex: notice what a cozy moment it is curled up on the couch under that blanket, and relish the fact that it is so cozy

B. COMPANY

3. Collaboration: team up with a person you really like and work together on that activity as a team.

Ex: join forces with your roommate to make the most delicious meal you can that maximizes your joint eating preferences

Ex: Help your friend with their errands, and then have them help you with yours

4. Obsession: do it with someone who DEEPLY loves that thing.

Ex: watch a movie for the first time with a person who absolutely adores it and has seen it ten times

Ex: have someone who is obsessed with bouldering give you your first lesson.

C. GAMES

5. Gamification: turn the activity into a game.

Ex: compete with others (or your own past record) and see how quickly you can complete a boring but necessary/useful task

Ex: use a system like habitica (https://bit.ly/3tzCwoh) to give yourself rewards/upgrades for doing things you know you should be doing anyway

6. Adventure: turn the activity into an adventure. You need (i) a well-chosen team that is up for anything, (ii) a goal that is challenging enough that the team could fail at it, and (iii) a setup that will (safely and consensually) push the boundaries or comfort zones of the group, or that has a substantial perception of risk but without any substantial danger (see Jon Levy’s The 2 AM Principle for great ideas about how to turn things into an adventure: https://amzn.to/39T9JmV).

Ex: you and your band of friends must make five new friends tonight and convince them all to go somewhere fun with you

Ex: you (a programmer) and your friends (a designer and a psychologist) have given yourself six weeks to create a new (simple) digital product of some kind and launch it, with the goal of getting 500 people to try it – if you get 500 users you’ve won, regardless of what happens after that

D. FRAMING

7. Novelty: find a way to do or experience that thing in a way you haven’t done so before.

Ex: instead of hanging out with friends on zoom, try it in VR or on http://gather.town

Ex: try eating your popcorn with chopsticks – “It’s like eating popcorn for the first time.” (as in Rob Smith’s cool study https://bit.ly/3cQFQpo)

8. Re-pricing: imagine that you spent $1000 on this experience and that it is rightly considered the very best of its kind in the world. Try to engage with the experience from that perspective.

Ex: imagine this is the most expensive glass of cranberry juice ever purchased, and drink it with tiny, tentative sips as you analyze the experience like a wine connoisseur

Ex: imagine that you paid $1000 to have this hour hanging out with your dog. What would you spend that hour doing? Okay, well, do it!

This piece was first written on February 7, 2021, and first appeared on this site on August 5, 2022.

With that definition in mind, there are many reasons a work team may have low productivity. To make a team more productive, I suggest first trying to pinpoint the predominant causes of inefficiency, since different failure points typically have different solutions. The key is to identify and then focus on just the 1-3 of these causes that seem to be the biggest recurring blockers of team productivity.

Once these biggest blockers are identified, an analysis needs to be made of why they are occurring (e.g., using a method like the “5 whys”, where you try to uncover the root cause of the issue). Then, strategies need to be developed to try to resolve the blockers, and one or two strategies that have sufficient team buy-in need to be selected for implementation. Finally, re-evaluation needs to occur to make sure the problems are actually improved by those strategies.

Below is a list of these potential failure points or blockers.

There are four main facets of team productivity (Planning, Effectiveness, Resources, and Communication), which break down further into specific reasons for low productivity. You can use this list by considering each potential reason and scoring the degree to which you think it’s a problematic factor on your team (or having all team members anonymously score each potential reason for how big a problem it is, and then aggregating the responses to find the few most important seeming issues).

—

Reasons For Low Team Productivity:

—

(A) Planning

(1) Wrong Goal – the work is focused on achieving a goal that is not actually particularly valuable.

      e.g., the team is building a new feature that customers don’t want

(2) Poor prioritization – rather than focusing on the very most important things, the team focuses on things of secondary importance.

      e.g., the team lead keeps pushing team members to make tiny improvements to existing features, even though there are really major features where implementation hasn’t even begun.

(3) Slow Path – the planned route for achieving the team’s goal is not as efficient as other routes to achieving the same goal.

      e.g., the team could use a well-tested plugin to help them solve their problem, but the team lead insists they build their own alternative to this plugin.

(4) Incompletion – there is no pressure to finish projects, or team members work on far too many projects at once, so work doesn’t get completed, or takes much longer than it should.

      e.g., when a crisis comes up, the projects already in progress are abandoned, and rarely are they picked up again.

(5) Feature Creep – the project takes a really long time to be released because its scope or feature set keeps unnecessarily increasing, repeatedly delaying the launch.

      e.g., the client keeps making more and more requests about what to include in the next version.

(6) Missing Buy-in – team members don’t actually care about achieving the team’s goals (i.e., they don’t view the goal as valuable, and don’t feel like a genuine team, such that they care about the team’s success).

      e.g., Bill doesn’t think the product they are building is worthwhile, Sally doesn’t feel invested in the success of her team members or the team overall.

(7) Incentive Misalignment – some team members have incentives that cut against the project going well, or are focused on optimizing for personal goals at the expense of project goals.

      e.g., team members know that if they succeed at the goal, then someone else will take all the credit, and if they fail at it, there will be no negative consequences, and Bob actually wants the project to fail because then he’ll get to move on to a different project he likes more.

(8) Missing Skills – certain skills are needed to accomplish the goals, but no one on the team has these skills, and there are no external consultants that can be called on.

      e.g., no one on the team has a good eye for design, so the interface you’re building has the right features but looks bad.

(9) Reactivity – the team is constantly reacting to crises or imminent deadlines, which means there isn’t time to focus on achieving the long-term goals.

      e.g., every month or two, there is a major system failure, followed by weeks of scrambling simply to get things back to normal.

(10) Groupthink – team members do not feel comfortable sharing their unique ideas, or challenging the team lead, or getting their ideas heard above the most vocal person, or contradicting the group consensus, so the best ideas don’t filter to the top.

      e.g., the first proposed solution to a problem was accepted because no one wanted to challenge the person who proposed it, and since no one spoke up, everyone assumed the other group members must be in consensus.

(11) Guessing – the team doesn’t have enough data or information to solve the problems they are working on, but rather than gathering this data or information, they guess at solutions that aren’t very likely to work.

      e.g., the team has the goal of reducing customer churn, but they haven’t conducted customer interviews or carefully analyzed the churn data, so they are merely guessing at why churn is occurring and developing inadequate solutions based on those guesses.

—

(B) Effectiveness

(12) Insufficient Time – people not working enough hours.

      e.g., a culture of showing up at 10 am and leaving at 4 pm.

(13) Waste – spending time engaged in unnecessary processes or pointless meetings.

      e.g., a culture of constant meetings where you have little time to get your actual work done, or a requirement to tediously document all your work.

(14) Distraction – people may not be able to get “in the zone” on their work because of frequent distractions, or an environment where it is hard to focus.

      e.g., a noisy office environment where colleagues continuously interrupt you to ask you questions.

(15) Burnout – people may feel stressed, depressed, disinterested, bored, or exhausted, and find it is psychologically difficult to get their work done.

      e.g., a culture where bosses regularly yell at, blame, and fire employees for things that are not their fault.

(16) Bad Foundations – the work may be building on other work that was not well made, slowing down additional progress.

      e.g., programmers inherit a massive, buggy, and poorly written spaghetti codebase (i.e., high levels of technical debt).

(17) Disempowerment – team members are not allowed to do certain things (or make certain decisions) that would move the project forward, or they are required to follow a bureaucratic or standardized process that is not an efficient or effective process.

      e.g., a user experience researcher is not allowed to pay customers for doing interviews, but customers won’t do the interviews for free.

(18) Intrinsic Difficulty – the work may genuinely be intrinsically difficult, with progress speed inherently limited.

      e.g., work involving proving new theorems that others have failed to prove.

—

(C) Resources

(19) Slow Platforms – the systems or platforms on which the work is performed make progress more difficult, slower, or more complex than it needs to be.

      e.g., teams are forced to work on Windows 98 and experience regular computer crashes, or teams are forced to work using old and out-of-date software.

(20) Lacking Tools – the team members don’t have the best tools to do their work.

      e.g., a construction team is forced to use a saw that is inappropriate for the job because they don’t have access to the right kind of saw.

(21) No Training – there is a lot of relevant information about how to do the job well that team members are not told, and have to laboriously figure out on their own, or struggle to get by without.

      e.g., programmers are expected to figure out how the undocumented API works on their own via trial and error.

(22) Insufficient Assistance – when team members are stuck, they have no one knowledgeable they can go to (or that they feel comfortable going to) for help.

      e.g., a machine learning researcher can’t get her neural network model training properly and has no one she can ask for advice.

(23) Insufficient Skill – team members are not sufficiently skilled at the tasks they are trying to do.

      e.g., the team members responsible for writing documentation are not skilled at clear communication.

—

(D) Communication

(24) Blocking – team members are waiting on each other to do things before they can get their own work done.

      e.g., Sam needs approval from Sally to move forward, but Sally requires approval from Samantha in order to give Sam permission.

(25) Conflict – team members dislike each other, don’t trust each other, or have clashing personalities.

      e.g., Bill refuses to work with Sam, Jill thinks that Jenny is trying to undermine her, Tim and Tammy get into heated arguments.

(26) Discordant Goals – different team members are working towards different long-term goals, because they are not on the same page about what the purpose, mission, or primary goal of the team is.

      e.g., the product manager is trying to add features, whereas the engineering team is trying to do a feature freeze so they can focus on stability and efficiency.

(27) Ambiguity – the goals are not clear enough, leading to confusion, false starts, and stops, or circling around problems without directly solving them.

      e.g., there is agreement that the user interface needs to be “easier to use,” but little clarity on what that means.

(28) Duplication – team members end up repeating work that has already been done (or that is in the process of being done) by others, either because they don’t know that other work exists or because they don’t trust the quality of it.

      e.g., the new lead engineer doesn’t trust the code developed by the prior lead engineer and so decides to rewrite it from scratch.

(29) Unassigned work – it is not clear who is supposed to tackle certain work (e.g., it is not in any particular person’s job description or current assignments), so some important work just doesn’t get done by anybody.

      e.g., nobody has been assigned the responsibility of bug testing, so bug testing simply doesn’t get done, and therefore, the product is highly buggy.

(30) Siloed Information – team members need information from each other to do their work well, but this information is not transmitted reliably.

      e.g., the team member doing customer interviews isn’t reliably communicating what they learn to the team member planning UX changes.

A big shoutout goes to Eddie Liu, who helped develop this framework.

This piece was first written on July 3, 2019, and first appeared on my website on January 22, 2026.

There is a simple formula for thinking about how to be more productive that most people aren’t familiar with. It breaks down productivity into the product of three factors, namely:

PRODUCTIVITY = TIME x EFFICIENCY x OBJECTIVE

More explicitly:
PRODUCTIVITY
(i.e., the total value – according to your own values – of your work each week on a goal of yours)
= TIME
(i.e., the total hours you work on the goal each week)
x EFFICIENCY
(i.e., the average fraction of the goal you complete *each hour* of time you spend on it)
x OBJECTIVE
(i.e., the total value – according to your values – that would be achieved from *fully* completing the goal)

To make a metaphor for this equation: imagine you’re trying to drive across the country. TIME would be how long you spend driving each day, EFFICIENCY would be the number of miles you make it on average towards your destination each hour (i.e., related to your speed but also to what route you take), and OBJECTIVE would be how valuable it actually is to you to make it all the way to the other side.

This equation assumes that you do eventually achieve your goal (since for some goals, such as getting into a PhD program, not fully completing the goal may produce zero value to you). It also only measures the value in an “average” sense.

To see that this equation really works, consider how the units cancel each other out:

TIME x EFFICIENCY x OBJECTIVE

= (hours) x (fraction_complete/hour) x (value_for_completing_all)

= fraction_complete x value_for_completing_all

= value_for_fraction_you_completed = PRODUCTIVITY

When it comes to PRODUCTIVITY, people are often concerned with spending more time on their goal, but as the equation above makes clear, there are two other unrelated ways to increase productivity. Increasing any of the three factors by the same amount (say, 10%) is equally valuable when it comes to productivity since the equation is fully symmetrical in the three factors. I’ll take a moment now to examine each of the three factors and some of the tricks for increasing them.

(1) TIME in our lives is fixed, so making more time is usually about some form of prioritization, that is, taking time away from something else (e.g., social media, chores, sleep, hobbies, friends) to make more time to work on a goal. Though in some cases, it is about leveraging some resource (e.g., money or people you can delegate to) towards making more time.

TIME-related productivity tips include:

-don’t do tasks that are neither important nor urgent (just ignore these time-wasting tasks)

-make a list of all your goals and then permanently cut out all of them except the one or two or three most important ones, and focus for years on just those

-delegate and outsource as much as you can (e.g., if you manage people, delegate to them, or if you can afford it, considering hiring a part-time assistant)

-if you can afford it, buy time-saving devices (e.g., a laundry machine/dishwasher/cleaning robot like Roomba) and services (e.g., a cleaning service)

-know the value of your time so that you know how much money to spend on time-saving stuff (you can calculate it using our tool here: https://bit.ly/2Fwiy8r)

-get comfortable saying “no” more (in a way that doesn’t offend) when people ask you to do things

-avoid addictive things and time-wasting activities (where afterward you don’t feel good about that use of time) and consider using plugins to block websites you spend too much time on

-automate tasks you do regularly (e.g., by making excel templates, or by using Zapier or IFTTT to connect services together, or using our system GuidedTrack.com to create repeatable processes/reusable tools)

(2) EFFICIENCY is about working effectively during each hour spent.

EFFICIENCY tips include:

-figure out what times of day you are most effective, and do your most important and challenging work at those times

-use caffeine to help regulate which hours are most productive (i.e., to make the most important hours work best for you)

-avoid getting too little sleep and avoid low sleep quality if you can (e.g., don’t drink caffeine at night)

-do restorative activities when you need a mental break from work if you can, such as quick exercise, yoga, taking a walk, or meditation

-turn off all non-essential phone and computer notifications so that you don’t get pulled out of the work you are doing

-avoid multi-tasking since it tends to lead to both slower and lower quality work

-leave long blocks of uninterrupted work time if you can (e.g., at least two-hour-long blocks with no meetings or distractions) so that you can achieve deep focus

-use the Pomodoro technique if it makes you more efficient (e.g., https://bit.ly/1gCYr3U)

-learn to use your tools faster (e.g., learn the key commands on your computer so that you can use the mouse less, and learn the shortcuts for the email program you use)

-if you can, make sure to have high-quality equipment for your work (e.g., if you spend 10 hours a day on your computer/using the internet, make sure your computer and internet run fast)

-get feedback from other efficient people about the process they do to do similar work, and see what ideas they have for streamlining your process

-break down the difficult tasks you do into sub-skills, and practice those sub-skills until you get good at them. For instance, if you are a slow typer, specifically practice your typing if it influences the speed at which you do all your other work.

-plan your route to achieving your objective carefully. Don’t just jump into working on the goal immediately; try to figure out the most efficient path to get you there. Compare multiple possible plans for achieving your goal to figure out the most efficient one.

-get others to critique your plan of how you’re trying to achieve your goal to see if they have ideas for a better path you may not have thought of.

(3) OBJECTIVE is about making sure the goal you are working towards is one that, if achieved, will produce a ton of value (according to what you consider valuable).

OBJECTIVE-related tips include:

-spend time reflecting on what you think is truly valuable, since the better you understand what is valuable, the easier it is to seek value in your goals

-don’t just pick a goal right away; compare multiple potential goals and evaluate how valuable they are before deciding between them

-explain your values to other people whose opinions you trust, and explain which goals you are considering, to see if they have thoughts about which goals to pick

-make sure you are aware of what the actual results of achieving a goal will be. For instance, if your goal is to become a doctor, investigate thoroughly in advance what it is like to be a doctor (ideally by talking both to current doctors and to people that decided to leave medicine).

-make sure that the goals you choose are based on what you believe is valuable and that you aren’t accidentally basing them on what others think is valuable instead (e.g., due to social pressures you experience)

It is in this OBJECTIVE variable that you tend to see the largest multiplier effects on PRODUCTIVITY since some goals are, in an expected value sense, at least 100x more valuable than others. Though typically, in those cases of very large amounts of value, the uncertainty in the value is also high (so one goal might be 100x better in expected value but still have a substantial chance of producing no value).

Oddly, some goals we may choose may have negative expected values (even according to our own value systems). Consider, for instance, someone who works for years towards a goal because they think it will make their parents happy (and it makes them miserable to work towards it). But it turns out they are wrong, and their parents are actually indifferent to them achieving the goal! In that case, due to a false belief about the world relating to their parents, the OBJECTIVE factor in the equation ends up being negative, making the whole productivity equation negative (hence the more TIME that is spent, the *less* value is produced, reversing the usual relationship!)

So, keeping all this in mind, what should you do if you want to be more productive? Well, remember that productivity is about three factors – TIME, EFFICIENCY, and OBJECTIVE.

It’s not just about how many hours you work towards a goal, but also about how efficient each hour of that work is and about how valuable the goal is to achieve in the first place. Each factor has unique techniques and tricks that can help you increase your total productivity.

Now suppose, for a moment, that you have no choice but to do the thing. That is, everything you care about in the world will be destroyed if you do not achieve it in X months. Here, X could be 1 if it’s a very small thing, or X could be 100 if it’s a much larger thing.

Under those circumstances, do you STILL believe you would fail to achieve it?

I think this sort of thought experiment can help us distinguish between things that we don’t believe we are capable of merely because we aren’t motivated enough versus things that we ACTUALLY believe are impossible for us.

And I think it’s important to distinguish between these two cases, because if something is in the first category, we may actually be able to get ourselves to succeed just by finding ways to increase our motivation!

I also suspect that for many people, a number of the things that they view as being impossible for them would be more likely to seem possible in the face of carrying out this thought experiment. In other words, it is easy to confuse “I’m not motivated enough to try really hard” with “I’m incapable.”

As an example: suppose that you believe you are just inherently bad at math and that no matter how hard you try, you couldn’t understand calculus. Well, what if the fate of the world rested on you understanding calculus in six months? Under those circumstances, I think you would very likely find a way to learn it, with plenty of time to spare.

This piece was first written on April 26, 2018, and was first released on this site on October 1, 2021.