SEBASTIAN MARSHALL

Strategy Philosophy Self-Discipline Science Victory

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Structural Fixes

Felipe asked... "Hi Sebastian, do you have any other suggestion on structural changes that can have massive impact in productivity of knowledge workers?"

Great question. Looking for structural fixes are a great use of time, and they easily help make changes and good behavior without needing to use willpower.

The only downside is there aren't very many universal environmental / structural changes, because everyone's goals and natural workflow are a little bit different. You'll have to spend some time brainstorming them.

There are a few universals though -- mostly related to getting clutter and mess away from you. Cleaning up your workspace, getting rid of clutter, and cleaning up your computer/desktop are near universally good. Beyond that?

I've had tremendous success starting the day on paper instead of on the computer. If that was particularly hard, sometimes I'd leave my laptop at my office and just bring a notebook with me.

How To Very Quickly Clear Your Email

A lot of email got you feeling down? I know the feeling. After spending a bunch of time playing around analyzing the root causes of why an inbox gets backed up, and using a few different techniques and tools, I've got a pretty rock-solid way to get your inbox to zero fast. It'll absolutely work for you if you do it.

Recommended Materials:

*Laptop*Comfortable spot without internet access*Offline email: Mac Mail, Thunderbird, Outlook, the Offline Gmail Chrome Plugin, or something similar*Scrap paper and a pen*An elegant note-taking program. I recommend Evernote.*A calendar

If you're an "online email only" kind of guy or gal, I'd recommend you set up IMAP so you've got all your email on your computer. Empirically speaking, internet access is distracting and leads down rabbit holes. The success rate of successfully clearing out the inbox goes down if you're online, and the time it takes to do so at least doubles. If you're a Gmail user, you're in luck -- Offline Gmail for Chrome is quite robust and you won't need to set anything up. I still like using Outlook or OSX's native Mail App better than Offline Gmail, but it's fast to set up.

Understanding the Email Problem

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