The Productivity Lab

The spiritual successor to our lost episode: The Quantified Self.In this episode, Kyle and Mark discuss some of their habits that they are a bit obsessed about and that may be a bit strange to all of you … even us! Get into this discussion to about our strange habits. All of this and more in this episode of The Productivity Lab!

Resources and Fun Stuff:

* Jack & the Girl – Kyle’s Short Story* Triggers by Marshall Goldsmith* Exist* Exist – TPL* Mark’s Notion Writing Log Template* Daylio* Readwise* Ulysses App* Readwise Reader* Refuse to Choose by Barbara Sher* Refuse to Choose – TPL* Kanban – TPL* The Practice – Seth Godin* A Pocket Full of Do – Chris Do

More from The Productivity Lab

* TheProductivityLab.show* Follow us on Twitter @ProductiveLab* Check us out on Instagram @ProductiveL...

In our recent review of Refuse to Choose by Barbra Sher we got interested in a concept brought up a lot throughout the book: the daybook. The daybook, aka the scanner daybook, is a system of capturing and exploring ideas as they come to you. Have a book idea? Write out your first chapter and see how it comes about? Got an idea for a hip new food truck? Use the pages of the day book to mind map out your menu ideas. Find a quote that inspires you? Add it to the next open spot in the book. The daybook is your handy dandy notebook for capturing all ideas and inspiration.

In this episode, we try out this daybook system to see if it’s as inspiring as Barbra Sher makes it out to be.

Resources & Fun Stuff

* Refuse to Choose by Barbra Sher* Jack & the Girl – Kyle’s latest short story* Dispatches from Quadrant Nine – Kyle’s newsletter, follow for project updates and recommendations* Commonplace Book – Wikipedia* Bullet Journal – Wikipedia* Zettelkasten – The Productivity Lab

More from The Productivity Lab

* TheProductivityLab.show* Follow us on Twitter @ProductiveLab* Check us out on Instagram @ProductiveLab

More from Mark & Kyle

* Mark’s personal website: askmark.io* Mark’s Instagram & Twitter* Kyle’s personal website: quadrantnine.net* Kyle’s Instagram & Twitter

Credits

Logo & BrandingDesign for The Productivity Lab is provided by Adam Dodson DesignsMusic“Getting it Done” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

This is a rebroadcast of Episode 30: Scary Fast Book Review.Today we take a turn from the best sellers list and take a deep dive into the self publishing scene within our work of productivity. In this episode Kyle & Mark review Scary Fast, a little known book by Canadian-American author Brian Michael Stegner. The book promises that the methods it covers will not only make you more productive, but significantly more so.

How does this book compare to the A listers previously reviewed on the show? What exactly is “scary fast”? And is it really possible to 10x your productivity? All of this and more in this episode of The Productivity Lab!

Resources and Fun Stuff:

* Kinesis Freestyle 2 Split Ergonomic Keyboard* SmartDesk 2 by Autonomous* Camp NaNoWriMo* Apex This* The 80/20 Rule (Aka Pareto Principle)* Parkinson’s law* Hyperfocus Book Review – The Productivity Lab* Zipf Mystery – Vsauce* SMART Goals* Notion* Todoist* Cold Showers Review – The Productivity Lab* One Year of Experiments – The Productivity Lab* Zapier* TextExpander* WaitButWhy* The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris* Getting Things Done by David Allen

More from The Productivity Lab

* TheProductivityLab.show* Follow us on Twitter @ProductiveLab* Check us out on Instagram @ProductiveLab

More from Mark & Kyle

* Mark’s personal website: askmark.io* Mark’s Instagram & Twitter* Kyle’s personal website: quadrantnine.net* Kyle’s Instagram & Twitter

Credits

Logo & BrandingDesign for The Productivity Lab is provided by

In this episode, we take a look back at the last year of experiments and book reviews. From the app Exist to Refuse to Choose! we rank our top three favorite habits and books and take a look at the habits we didn’t necessarily enjoy. It’s been a fun two years, here’s to another one!

Resources & Fun Stuff

* Kyle’s fortnightly newsletter: Dispatches from Quadrant Nine* Readwise* Readwise’s Obsidian integration* Obsidian

More from The Productivity Lab

* TheProductivityLab.show* Follow us on Twitter @ProductiveLab* Check us out on Instagram @ProductiveLab

More from Mark & Kyle

* Mark’s personal website: askmark.io* Mark’s Instagram & Twitter* Kyle’s personal website: quadrantnine.net* Kyle’s Instagram & Twitter

Credits

Logo & BrandingDesign for The Productivity Lab is provided by Adam Dodson DesignsMusic“Getting it Done” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

Do you want to learn and do everything? Do you find it hard to choose one thing to start? Do you feel like a failure because you never complete a project? You’re not alone!Author Barbara Sher promises to help us achieve everything we want to do. Can she do it? Find out in this episode of The Productivity Lab.

Resources & Fun Stuff

* Camp NaNo* Wishcraft* GTD Book Review – TPL* Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Issacson* Themed Days – TPL* Cortex Podcast

More from The Productivity Lab

* TheProductivityLab.show* Follow us on Twitter @ProductiveLab* Check us out on Instagram @ProductiveLab

More from Mark & Kyle

* Mark’s personal website: askmark.io* Mark’s Instagram & Twitter* Kyle’s personal website: quadrantnine.net* Kyle’s Instagram & Twitter

Credits

Logo & BrandingDesign for The Productivity Lab is provided by Adam Dodson DesignsMusic“Getting it Done” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

Sometimes our todo list can be overwhelming with too many things of equal importance on it all at once. How do you stop such madness from consuming you? In this episode of The Productivity Lab we test out one method for sorting our todo list know as Dice & Doing.

The rules of Dice & Doing are simple: write a number next to the item in your to do list, pick a die that matches the size of the list (or use a random number generator online) and roll away. The number the die (or random number generator) lands on is what you’ll do. In this episode Kyle & Mark test out this simple method to see if it really does make a difference in their daily productivity. All of this and more in this episode of The Productivity Lab!

Resources & Fun Stuff

* Waited by Mark Askew (Mark’s latest story)* Starward Shadows Quarterly (The publication Kyle’s submitting to)* The Productivity Project book Review – The Productivity Lab* Refuse to Choose! by Barbara Sher

More from The Productivity Lab

* TheProductivityLab.show* Follow us on Twitter @ProductiveLab* Check us out on Instagram @ProductiveLab

More from Mark & Kyle

* Mark’s personal website: askmark.io* Mark’s Instagram & Twitter* Kyle’s personal website: quadrantnine.net* Kyle’s Instagram & Twitter

Credits

Logo & BrandingDesign for The Productivity Lab is provided by Adam Dodson DesignsMusic“Getting it Done” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

Sometimes it can feel like it’s impossible to get anything done, the world is just so full of distractions and now more than ever it’s possible to distract ourselves with social media, video streaming services, and messaging apps. In this episode of The Productivity Lab Kyle and Mark decide to cut themselves from their voluntary distractions by removing all distracting devices from their workspace for two weeks. Does it work? Did they become more productive, or did they simply find other ways to distract themselves? Find out all of this and more in this installment of The Productivity Lab!

Resources & Fun Stuff

* Analog Review – The Productivity Lab* Austin FC* Todoist* Microsoft Todo* Notion* My Daily Drivers (2021 Edition) – Kyle’s old planning method* Camp NaNoWriMo* New Notion Features* Obsidian* FocusMe* Uzumaki by Junji Ito* Distraction Logging – The Productivity Lab

More from The Productivity Lab

* TheProductivityLab.show* Follow us on Twitter @ProductiveLab* Check us out on Instagram @ProductiveLab

More from Mark & Kyle

* Mark’s personal website: askmark.io* Mark’s Instagram & Twitter* Kyle’s personal website: quadrantnine.net* Kyle’s Instagram & Twitter

Credits

Logo & BrandingDesign for The Productivity Lab is provided by Adam Dodson DesignsMusic“Getting it Done” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

What where we doing, oh, right! Continuing with challenges from the Productivity Project book, Kyle and Mark start tracking their distractions. What did they learn? What distracted them the most? Find out in this episode of The Productivity Lab.

Resources & Fun Stuff

* iOS 15 Focus Mode* MTG WWDC Cortex* Analog by Ugmonk Review – TPL* Stoic Week – TPL* Zettelkasten – TPL

More from The Productivity Lab

* TheProductivityLab.show* Follow us on Twitter @ProductiveLab* Check us out on Instagram @ProductiveLab

More from Mark & Kyle

* Mark’s personal website: askmark.io* Mark’s Instagram & Twitter* Kyle’s personal website: quadrantnine.net* Kyle’s Instagram & Twitter

Credits

Logo & BrandingDesign for The Productivity Lab is provided by Adam Dodson DesignsMusic“Getting it Done” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

You’re constantly on the go; you move from work to projects, but what about those needed maintenance tasks? The laundry, dishes, mail, groceries—when do you have time to complete these things?Introducing Maintenance Days —and lists! Following the Productivity Project book review, Kyle and Mark embark on creating maintenance days for all the things they hate to do. How does it go? Will they like it? Find out in this episode of The Productivity Lab.

Resources & Fun Stuff

* What if remote work didn’t mean working from home? – The New Yorker* Employees are quitting instead of giving up working from home– Bloomberg* Apple employees push back against returning to the office – The Verge* Digital Minimalism – Book* Digital Minimalism – TPL* Infinite Jest* /r/InfiniteSummer* The Productivity Project – TPL* Pocket* Walden Pond* Meal Replacements – TPL

More from The Productivity Lab

* TheProductivityLab.show* Follow us on Twitter @ProductiveLab* Check us out on Instagram @ProductiveLab

More from Mark & Kyle

* Mark’s personal website: askmark.io* Mark’s Instagram & Twitter* Kyle’s personal website: quadrantnine.net* Kyle’s Instagram & Twitter

Credits

Logo & BrandingDesign for The Productivity Lab is provided by

Three years ago Kyle picked up a book that caught his eye, and little did he know at the time would lead to the creation of this very podcast you’re listening to right now. The that would lead to the genesis of this very show was The Productivity Project by show favorite author Chris Bailey. The Productivity Project tells the tale of one productivity nerd’s year long experiment of living by various productivity tips, tricks and methods and finding out which ones helped him the best with getting stuff done. From working 90 hour work weeks, to waking up at five in the morning, and even drinking only water for a month, Chris puts these methods to the test Mythbusters style.

In this episode Kyle & Mark celebrate episode fifty with a review of The Productivity Project, together they share their inspirations from the book, discuss their favorite experiment of Chris’, and talk about what productivity means to them and why they love productivity so much.

Resources & Fun Stuff

* Mass Effect Legendary Edition* Apex This Podcast* Apex This Youtube* The Canterbury Tales Folio Society Edition Book Review by Mark* HyperFocus by Chris Bailey* HyperFocus Book Review – The Productivity Lab* A Life of Productivity – Chris Bailey’s Personal Site* Everyday Superhumans* Focused #65 – Hyperfocused with Chris Bailey* Focused #119 – Productivity & Meditation, with Chris Bailey* Long working hours killing 745,000 people a year, study finds – BBC* The Productivity Project | Chris Bailey | Talks at Google* Atomic Habits Book Review – The Productivity Lab* Resistance List – The Productivity Lab* The Lady Astronaut Series by Mary Robinette Kowal* PARA Method* Getting Things Done – The Productivity Lab

More from The Productivity Lab

* TheProductivityLab.show* Follow us on Twitter @ProductiveLab* Check us out on Instagram @ProductiveLab

More from Mark & Kyle

* Mark’s personal website: askmark.io* Mark’s Instagram &