There was a recent study of ravens that found they can plan. They can do the simple-to-humans function of planning for future possibilities. Only known to be a capability of humans and apes before, ravens (or, corvids) have now joined the elite thinkers of planet Earth. But, what does planning have to do with productivity? Why, everything! And, that's what the ProductivityCast team entertains in this cast--the importance of planning and getting into action so that you can get more done by thinking more about the right things and doing less of the unproductive things on your way to your goals. So, enjoy this episode on how to think more, do less, get more done.

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In this Cast | think more, do less, get more done

Ray Sidney-Smith

Augusto Pinaud

Francis Wade

Show Notes | think more, do less, get more done

Resources we mention, including links to them will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context.

Ravens—like humans and apes—can plan for the future

Getting Things Done by David Allen

Google Drive

Dropbox

Gmail

Evernote

OneNote

Flow

Deliberate practice

Deep Work (book)

Deep Work (Productivity Book Group)

Raw Text Transcript | think more, do less, get more done

Raw, unedited and machine-produced text transcript so there may be substantial errors, but you can search for specific points in the episode to jump to, or to reference back to at a later date and time, by keywords or key phrases. The time coding is h:mm:ss.ms to h:mm:ss.ms (e.g., 0:00:00.000,0:00:04.000 starts at 0.00 seconds and ends at 4 seconds in the cast's audio).

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Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling productive life then you've come to the right place product to be cast the weekly showboat all things product to Vittie here your host Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks Hello and welcome to productivitycast the weekly show about all things personal productivity I'm Ray Sidney-Smith and I'm joined here with Augusto Pinaud and Francis Wade Welcome to the show guys good morning oh is everybody doing to be back I'm doing really well and today we're going to be talking about thinking about thinking we're going to talk about thinking about your productivity system and getting into action and we were just talking before the show recording about this study that was done back in July of twenty seventeen what these research scientists have discovered was that Ravens or corvids the birds known as corvids Jays crows and ravens all showed signs of planning I'm reading here out of a science mag dot org article which I'll link to in the show notes and so it turns out that humans apes not monkeys and birds all have the ability to plan and as the article says quote planning is the ability to think through future events taking place at a different location and quote and so really for us thinking about our personal productivity I think it's really important for us to all think about how we plan how we think about the future in the perspective of getting things done and so for me I really have always stood on the the the perspective or stood from the perspective that our cognitive skills are very similar to the way in which athletes condition and plan for competing in events and that week I think that we miss appropriately think that we're all. Running marathons when in reality we're actually playing you know small sprints throughout our lives even throughout our days and we need to be conditioning ourselves and planning effectively for each of those variety of sprints and our specialized sprints right so particular type of Sprint that you would prepare for would be in a in a say of racing or running you know athletic event would be maybe the pole jump or you know the long jump or you know the five hundred meter dash or something like that you know each of those requires you to work out for tequila things but it's also planning out the strategy of how you would compete in that event and I think a lot of that is power a wild with our own personal productivity as well as a personal productivity systems you know I'm quite beem a big job and I believe that thinking and planning it help you tremendously when you get into good later called the auction or the reality is that all of us been on productivity or intra and two shift or an expert or whatever you want to call yourself about productivity or not you have the same problem you have an incredible amount of time and you have an incredibly poor gives amount of time to do all of those those work problems are coming the difference from TIME BETWEEN A P one person who is brought up to be called up or tried to run a vision versus the ones who are not comes into this thing can come into this plan because you think about it and you need to go to one place and you get to that whites Let's put an example let's say the girls there is something most people when you go to the grocery and serve them going to make dinner today I'm going to put the chicken break so you go to the groceries and buy chicken get home and then you open the recipe and say Oh well I. Alternate garlic get in the car go back to buy garlic from by step three or I mean only go back for the third time and so far so on prevention are you going to make the recipe or the chicken for the night yes it's going to be unaffected and efficient way to know that there wouldn't that recipe what gives you the very soul of somebody being given planning before if instead of that you will have grabbed the recipe and shared Well I mean chicken or any garlic I need on him or any whites and when you go to the grocery you pick the four you will have external drive to the grocery transfer four times you will have been able to be the one you will have been able to go get home every to really get the project done in this particular case there are there is no difference between that example can any of our on your professional life the main difference between making dinner and a problem that you have from your professional life is that the recipe is not real and you need to be the one to create That's right that's a little bit a little bit differently and the only distinction I would draw is that cooking is a learned skill whereas something like running we can't remember the last time when we learned to run but people can burn at the time when they learn to cook so most all adults know let's say we know how to run. And don't think about running as a scale which is subject to development or even something they want to develop they can live a life without learning to run any better better more efficiently so it's more inherent so therefore it goes to sleep I think most people I think proclivity is more like running where whereas we learn the concept of time when we are six seven or eight we are able to teach ourselves. Create. Ask somewhere in or adolescence and we learn methods teach ourselves methods to manage tasks somewhere in our teens but by the time we get the dog heard it becomes for most people who we're talking to or isn't new to this park us every learn how to manage task and they can't remember how they got there so it doesn't appear to be a skill that is picked up at some point in their life it's more like running and not as much like cooking which which is something you definitely learn a lot of people can't do I can't begin to me and I think because press of productivity is sort of. Blind where whole of black intell or development of it we make we're going the wrong directions when it comes to trying to make think about our skills to improve it so people people can really be convinced that all I need to do is the bag buy a new device and that device with improve my productivity and they can also be confused and say I need a different job because the job I has I have has too many tasks associated with it so I need a job that has less tasks and I think those are two of the mistakes that people make when they think of their productivity they go to solutions that have nothing to do with their own or an inherent skill they look for external solutions I think part of the three of us do is try to bring into people's consciousness this notion that your capacity and the mistakes that you experience because you are managing your productivity well are yes somewhat a function of these external things but they're also a huge part of the skills that you use every day so I think we spell out the time finding that message and trying to get people to buy into it and some do and then some zones I think that it's really important for people to recognize as you said Francis that there are certain skills that we are very comfortable with and certain skills that we aren't sort of like that. That you talk about you know where we all sort of know that we can run even though we don't really remember that we can run versus other skills where we had to learn them and there was a discrete moment in our lives when we started learning that process like learning to drive or otherwise or other kinds of rites of passage into adolescence young adulthood and then adult life for me I really think about the very concrete skills necessary cognitive skills that are necessary for example the thinking skill of clarifying what something is and whether or not it's actionable you know in sort of the Getting Things Done or G.T.D.