Effective 4-Step Method for Sustainable Productivity

Achieve More with Less: A Holistic Approach to Productivity

Hi, this is Samuel from Enginuity 👋 This post is part of the Tech Leadership track and focuses on a long-term sustainable time & productivity management method.

Below, you’ll also find a FigJam template I’ve created as an accompanying resource for this post.

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True productivity is about working smarter, not harder—achieving meaningful results without sacrificing well-being.

It is not about doing everything but about doing the right things in the right way.

In this article, I want to look at productivity from a sustainable perspective. Instead of focusing on how much you can do, we’ll explore how to maximize your impact.

I call this method PEAR (an acronym for its steps), and I’ve been using it for some time now. It has proven incredibly helpful, so I want to share it with you.

Step 1: Prioritize Effectively

Not all tasks are created equal.

80% of your results come from just 20% of your efforts

— Pareto Principle

A small fraction of your tasks will have a disproportionately large impact on your success.

This means that unless you effectively prioritize what you focus on, how well you execute it will not matter. Your work's impact will be sub-optimal. You’ll do more work, but you’ll not do better work.

Multiple methods exist for effective prioritization. Below, we’ll explore two that I find the most useful.

Eisenhower Matrix

The matrix helps you categorize tasks based on their urgency and importance.

This aligns well with the Pareto Principle by helping you focus on high-impact activities.

First, make a to-do list of all the tasks you think you should do. Try to include everything you can think of. After that, split these items into four different categories:

• Urgent and Important — Do First

  • Tasks that are both urgent and critical to your goals.

  • Either they have upcoming deadlines or not making them would have a negative effect on you.

  • These are often your 20% tasks that will yield 80% of your results.

• Not Urgent but Important — Schedule

  • High-impact tasks that aren’t urgent but are crucial for long-term success.

  • These are usually connected to your mid and long-term plans

• Urgent but Not Important — Delegate

  • Tasks that need immediate attention but don't significantly contribute to your goals.

  • Even though they don’t contribute to your overall goals, they still need to be done.

• Not Urgent and Not Important — Eliminate

  • Tasks that don’t contribute to your productivity.

  • Eliminate or minimize these.

ABCDE Method

In this method, you categorize tasks into 5 different categories by ranking them by priority first.

Think about it as a sorted to-do list, allowing you to focus on the most impactful tasks first:

This is the simplest form of addressing your randomly organized to-do list.

The magic is not in the method but in the time you spend thinking about why you need to do what you originally planned.

Resource: FigJam Template

As an accompanying resource to this article, I’ve prepared a FigJam template with even more prioritization methods.

It’s totally up to you which one you’ll choose. Pick one that works best for you and to which you can consistently stick:

Step 2: Execute with Focus

The Law of Diminishing Returns is an economic principle that states:

After some optimal level of capacity is reached, adding an additional factor of production will actually result in smaller increases in output

In the context of productivity, this means that:

The longer you work on a task without taking breaks, the less efficient and effective you become.

Your focus decreases, your energy goes down, and the quality of your work suffers.

To combat this, the Pomodoro Technique offers a structured approach to maintaining high levels of productivity:

1. Working in short, focused sessions (Pomodoros) — typically 25 minutes

2. After each session, take a 5-minute break.

3. After completing 4-5 sessions, take a longer break of 15-30 minutes.

Regular breaks prevent mental fatigue, allowing you to return to your task with renewed energy and focus.

I use this technique both at work, while programming, and also when writing this newsletter.

My adjustments

I use Pomodoro breaks not just to rest but also as opportunities to step back and reflect on the task at hand.

I ask myself questions like:

• "Is this the best way to approach this?"

• "Am I still aligned with main objectives?"

• "Does it make sense as a whole?"

This thinking helps me stay on track with my larger goals. Give it a try, mainly when you feel you are missing something or something is off while working on a task.

Managing Context Switching

Each time you switch tasks, your brain needs time to adjust to the new context, which leads to increased cognitive load and mental fatigue.

The more frequently you switch, the more time you lose to this adjustment process, making it harder to maintain focus and momentum. It can take your brain 10 minutes to adapt to the new context.

To minimize the negative effects of context switching, it’s important to plan your day so that you don’t frequently need to switch between different tasks.

Batch Similar Tasks

Group similar tasks together and tackle them in one block of time.

For example, if you have several emails to respond to, you can use a specific time block just for email management rather than spreading it throughout the day.

Thematic Days or Half Days

This strategy, also used by people like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk, involves dedicating entire days or large portions of your day to specific types of work.

For instance, mornings could be reserved for deep work, and afternoons might be set aside for creative tasks or planning. If you wear multiple hats at work, this is a great way to juggle them.

By organizing your work into themes, you stay in one mode of thinking for extended periods, reducing the cognitive load associated with switching.

Step 3: Allocate Buffer Time

Work will expand to fill the time allotted for its completion.

— Parkinson's Law

If you give yourself too much time to complete a task, it will likely take longer than necessary. This phenomenon is common in professional and personal life — tasks that could be completed quickly drag on because there's no urgency to finish them.

Therefore, the recommendation is to set clear and realistic deadlines for each task to prevent them from taking more time than they should. Having a target to work towards creates a sense of urgency and helps you stay focused.

But there is a problem:

Most people are too optimistic about what they can achieve within a given time.

This is one of the effects of a phenomenon known as Optimism bias:

• We overestimate our likelihood of experiencing positive events

• We underestimate our likelihood of experiencing negative events

For many of us, it can go like this:

1. Prioritize tasks that need to be done.

2. Schedule time blocks in the calendar or estimate the time needed to complete them.

3. We don't hit our targets because of unexpected delays, lack of energy, or interruptions.

4. We need to move unfinished work to the next day, piling more work on an already busy schedule.

The result is frustration, overworking, and, if it goes on for a long time — burnout.

Account for Unexpected Delays

Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.

This law highlights the reality that tasks often take more time than anticipated, even when you try to plan for delays.

• Build Buffer Time

  • Deliberately add extra time to tasks or meetings to account for potential overruns.

  • For instance, if you estimate that a task will take two hours, allocate an additional 30 minutes to an hour as a buffer.

  • This way, if the task takes longer than expected, you won’t be forced to cut into the time reserved for other tasks.

• Leave Extra Time Between Major Tasks

  • Avoid scheduling tasks or meetings back-to-back.

  • Leave some space between major activities to give yourself breathing room to handle anything unexpected without increasing your stress levels.

• Learn to Say No

  • Not every task or request deserves your time. If it doesn’t, practice saying no or delegate the task to someone else.

  • Productivity isn’t about doing as much as possible. It’s about doing what’s most important and doing it well.

  • Jordan Cutler and Sidwyn Koh recently wrote a great article on this topic with many practical tips: How to say "No" and win back your time as a software engineer

Step 4: Reduce Mental Clutter

People remember incomplete or interrupted tasks better than completed ones.

— Zeigarnik Effect

This psychological phenomenon says that unfinished tasks linger in your mind, causing distractions and making it difficult to focus on other work.

The weight of these incomplete tasks can contribute to a sense of overwhelm and mental clutter, reducing your productivity and increasing stress.

Luckily, there are ways to counteract the Zeigarnik Effect:

Break Down Large Tasks into Smaller Ones

One of the most effective ways to manage the stress of incomplete tasks is to break them down into smaller, more manageable parts.

Instead of having one overwhelming entity, divide it into smaller, actionable steps that can be completed more efficiently.

Completing smaller steps provides a sense of progress and reduces the mental burden of an unfinished task.

Use Task Management Tools

There are many tools for tracking your tasks and progress, such as Notion, Trello, Todoist, and Any.do. Even a simple paper notebook will work great.

These tools allow you to:

• 📈 visualize your progress

• ✅ check off completed tasks

• 📌 keep an overview of what still needs to be done

The goal is to externalize your tasks into some system so you can eliminate the need to remember every detail, which helps reduce mental clutter.

Prioritize Task Completion

To minimize the cognitive load of unfinished tasks, prioritize completing tasks whenever possible.

Stop starting; start finishing! — agile thinking

Instead of juggling multiple incomplete tasks, focus on finishing one before moving on to the next.

Summary

Let’s recap the PEAR method:

1. Prioritize Effectively

   1. Use the Eisenhower matrix or ABCDE method to find 20% of tasks delivering 80% of results (Pareto Principle).

2. Execute with Focus

   1. Use the Pomodoro technique (Law of Diminishing Returns) together with thematic time blocks to keep maximal focus and avoid context switching.

3. Allocate Buffer Time

   1. Schedule realistic deadlines (Parkinson's Law) that account for unexpected delays (Hofstadter's Law) to avoid reducing your productivity and increasing stress.

4. Reduce Mental Clutter

   1. Externalize your planning with a task management tool and prioritize task completion before starting yet another workstream to eliminate mental overwhelm (Zeigarnik Effect).

Remember, it’s not about how great a process you have but how well you execute it. Therefore, the lighter the process, the easier it is to follow and benefit from.

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📣 Top Picks

• Build Your Credibility As You Grow by Akash Mukherjee in Leadership Letters

• Empathy is a superpower in the engineering industry by Gregor Ojstersek in Engineering Leadership

• How I went from Tech Lead → Engineering Management by Caleb Mellas in Level Up Software Engineering 🚀

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📖 More From Enginuity

Check my previous article, in which I discuss 3 key lessons engineers can learn from well-written Product Requirement Documents:

• 🎯 Clear Objectives

• 🤝 User-Centric Focus

• 🚢 Prioritization and Trade-offs

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