How I Get Things Done - My TOP 9 Productivity Tips

A creator’s productivity hinges less on squeezing in more work and more on removing the biggest sources of wasted effort—especially perfectionism, burnout, and slow process steps. The core prescription is to publish when work reaches “good enough,” then protect energy with sleep, exercise, and structured breaks, and finally run content creation like a system where bottlenecks get fixed one at a time.

The first principle targets perfectionism directly: “good is better than perfect.” Instead of endlessly rewriting scripts, recording, or articles until they feel flawless, the workflow shifts to a threshold mindset—often framed as the “70 principle,” where completing about 70% of the work should be sufficient because extra polishing rarely changes outcomes. The reasoning is practical: creators are too close to their own content to judge it from the audience’s first-time perspective, and viewers typically won’t notice minor imperfections. The decision rule is simple—stop extra work once the piece is “good enough” to publish, freeing time for the next piece.

The second principle, “optimize yourself,” treats creator output as dependent on human capacity. Since creators often operate as one-person teams (recording, writing, publishing, and frequently appearing on camera), burnout becomes a real constraint. The approach is built around a daily baseline: sleep plus exercise plus rest. Sleep is tracked with a sleeping app, with an emphasis on getting at least eight hours and keeping a consistent wake time (adjusting bedtime when needed). Exercise is scheduled as a daily 30-minute block at the end of the workday, whether at home or outdoors. Rest is structured through breaks—most notably a longer lunch (two hours) to split the day into a morning “maker” block for creative work and an afternoon “manager” block for admin tasks, aligning with the maker-versus-manager idea attributed to Paul Graham. Short breaks (10–15 minutes) and a brief post-exercise pause before recording help sustain focus.

The third principle, “systems oriented,” reframes goals as direction rather than daily instruction. A goal like growing a YouTube channel to 100,000 subscribers doesn’t specify what to do each day; a system does. For video production, the system is broken into steps—idea, scripting, recording, editing, and publishing—then improved by locating the bottleneck, the slowest step that limits overall throughput. When editing became the bottleneck (taking roughly 70% of the time), an editor was hired to remove that constraint. Once editing sped up, scripting became the next bottleneck, leading to a shift away from word-for-word scripts and toward a more natural delivery with less rigid prompting.

Tactics reinforce the principles. A “daily highlight” sets one must-do task each day (often recording), scheduled during peak energy hours with distractions minimized—using tools like Stay Focused with “nuclear” blocking and adding end times to leverage Parkinson’s law. To beat initial resistance, “atomic steps” use a two-minute timer to start with the easiest preparatory action (setting up a studio, writing an introduction, or doing quick research) so momentum carries the work forward.

Finally, three tools support the ecosystem: Notion for planning and collaboration using a PARA-style structure (Projects, Areas, Resources, Archive) with a Kanban workflow for video stages; a calendar app (Fantastical) for time-blocking; and Rome (Zettelkasten-style note-taking) to capture and connect ideas from content consumption into reusable material for scripts, articles, and weekly reviews using plus/minus and next-step planning. The combined effect is a repeatable workflow that prioritizes publishing, protects energy, and increases output by fixing the slowest parts first—while keeping the process enjoyable.