A question from Mukul who says, "It's been over a month. My to-do list keeps on growing. My productivity system uses Todoist, Google Calendar, and Notion, but for the past month I'm falling behind on my work. There are many days when I don't check my list or forget to create a daily plan or monthly plan.

I tried to reorder my mobile home screen many times. Still I'm falling behind. Can you suggest a way to be efficient with my productivity system?" Well, Mukul, I find it very hard to believe that your strategy of reordering your mobile home screen did not solve all of your productivity problems.

That's number one. If you read my books or see my appearances, I really focus on icons on your mobile home screen and configuration settings in your productivity software. That is the key. You want to understand how Elon Musk gets done what he gets done? That is how he does it.

His icons are in the right folders on his phone. I am, of course, being sarcastic. I'm going to use you sort of as a straw man here, Mukul, to try to make some larger points for the audience. What you were describing to me in this question is not a productivity system.

It is a collection of productivity tools. So for you to tell me about my productivity system is to do as Google Calendar and Notion, why am I still falling behind and not getting things done? That's like me coming to you and being like, "Let me tell you about my exercise routine.

I bought a Peloton. I own some weights and I have a rowing machine. So why am I not losing weight and getting stronger?" You would say, "Well, you haven't told me anything about what your actual fitness habits are. Like when you exercise, how much you exercise, what you eat, how this fits into your life.

You just listed exercise machines that you own. It's the same thing that's going on here." So I think what we need to do is get back to basics. You need to build a system. Forget the tools. You need to build a system from the ground up. You need to start small, start simple, get a feel for that, and then you can start adding in the complexity.

You're not going to solve your problem of being scattered and procrastinating and having too much to do by jumping straight into really complexity. Complexity doesn't solve your problem. You need systems that make sense. So the easiest thing you can do is if you go to my YouTube channel, youtube.com/CalNewportMedia, I have a video on time management.

So I have this series called Core Ideas where I recorded videos on some of the core ideas I talk about. Go back and watch my Core Idea time management video. You'll get the overview of my philosophy. For the sake of our audience now, I'm going to excerpt out a sort of starting point for you.

I think where you are now is you need to go all the way back to the basics and start by considering what I call the productivity funnel, the collection of three layers of systems that need to be in place to help you successfully navigate the universe of all possible things you could be doing at the top of the funnel to things that you actually accomplish that comes out of the bottom of the funnel.

In between those two things, mediating the universe of everything, what you actually do, we have three levels. Level number one is activity selection. What is your system or philosophy for figuring out what you do, what you agree to do, what you take on. Below that, you get the organization.

How do you keep track of, organize, and make plans around what you have agreed to do? And at the very bottom level, you have execution. How do you actually in the moment properly execute what needs to be done? When people are just getting started with time management, this is where I have them start and I have them start simple on each of these levels.

So activity selection, you need to A, probably clean the decks. I'm assuming you're doing too many things in a fit of ambition. You've just said, I'm going to learn this language. I'm going to become a YouTuber. I'm going to learn how to program. I'm going to get promotion over here.

You can't cut that down. You can cut this down to many fewer things and have some sort of coherent, simple, but coherent philosophy for what you agree to, how many missions you actually want to be pursuing. Maybe you have one in your current job that you're pursuing to help you get promoted faster and one on your side hustle.

Keep it simple. With organization, I mean, you have to keep track of and organize things. If you watch that video on YouTube, that's where I talk about multi-scale planning, daily, weekly, quarterly planning. You could watch that video and you can start that. Or it could be as simple as just, I have a place where everything is written down.

Simple Dave Allen capture. When new things come onto my plate, it gets captured. I jot it down. I have a notebook with me at all times and I transfer that over to my list or my calendar. Nothing's forgotten. Everything's written down. You can start simple, just have something working there.

And when it comes to execution, how do you actually accomplish things when it's time to execute? This is where deep work matters. This is where time blocking matters. I'm working on one thing at a time. And when I'm doing this thing, I'm not also checking my phone. I'm also not also on YouTube.

A lot of young people, Mukul, I don't know that you're young, but I'm just assuming from your elaboration that you are, have this rough approximation of productivity where they just throw a lot of frenetic activity at their day. I'm all over the place and I'm over here and I'm on YouTube and jumping over here and I'm doing a TikTok over here.

Now I'm seeing this email over here. How you execute matters. Time means nothing. Quantity of activity means nothing. What you produce is what matters. And the best way to produce is one thing at a time, giving it your full concentration. So start with the funnel, selection, organization, execution, have an idea for each.

I elaborated in that video, start simple, but start clear. What you're trying to do, simple systems, and you can start building up the more complexity from there. But I think this is definitely Mukul, a back to basics, a back to basics move. And if all of that fails, make your iPhone screen grayscale.

And that was a big popular tip back when I was promoting digital minimalism. All the tech types were like, I know the secret to being distracted by my phone. I figured out how to make my iPhone screen black and white, and then it's not as distracting and it won't pull my attention in.

It's all about if I just have the one hack, the one hack. And if you're a tech person, it has to be a hack that's a little bit technically complicated. Because then it's conceivable to you that this is why no one else is doing it, because it's a little bit hard to figure out how to change your phone in the grayscale.

And it's always a dream. By doing one kind of complicated technical thing on my computer, I have the solution. Same thing with golf. It's all the one tip. That's how they hook you. It's like the, in Curb Your Enthusiasm, the weatherman had a golf tip. This is kind of insider baseball.

I don't know if you noticed, the weatherman had this golf tip. And so Marty Funkhauser was starting to tell Larry, the weatherman, who's like an actual weatherman, has this great golf tip. And it changed my game. And, I mean, I did this one thing and I've been swinging natural, my score is down.

And it's like a season long thing that he never gets the tip. Because of course he accuses the weatherman of falsely forecasting rain so that he can get the golf course, like better tee times at the golf course. So they have a falling out and Funkhauser says, I don't feel right giving you the tip.

And it comes up again and again. But yeah, I don't know. Mukul's probably looking for the equivalent of the weatherman's tip for productivity. That show's so good. If your notion setup is just properly hooked with a Zapier script to the drafts install on your phone, you're going to be productive.

Well, the marketing for golf and productivity tools is like really good. And that's what they try to hook you with. So why aren't we, because there's all these professional golfers that like my productivity stuff. So why have we not brought these two worlds together? I think it's starting to, you get a lot of professional golfer.

You've gotten a couple questions. Yeah. Some of them listen to you. That's what I need to do. Deep swing, you know, somehow like meld those two worlds together. Do an infomercial. You can start with tennis too, because the city open is going on right now. Walk over there. Yeah.

Test out your card. Tennis players don't know me as much. I haven't really come across a lot of tennis players who are deep work people. It's similar to golf. I know. What's your problem? Anyway. Yeah. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)