Productivity - Abhishek Chakraborty

Problem Trading: Why We Should Learn to Live With Our Problems

It’s interesting that the most practical problem-solving lessons are business lessons. It’s because the stakes are real in business and you have real skin in the game. If you don’t make the right decisions, death is certain. In fact, the default outcome for any startup is death. This means you have

Be an Imperfectionist

Perfectionism is either an excuse to explain why you can’t get something done, or it’s a way (for bad managers) to justify why employees should work harder. It’s stupid and callous, and—as we’ll soon discover—not a good strategy, especially if you want to get things done.

Metalearning: The Essential First Step of Learning That Nobody Taught You

Metalearning is the process of figuring out how to learn a particular subject based on how knowledge is structured and organised. If learning was a building, metalearning helps you figure out how to reach the top floor—whether to take the stairs, or the elevator, or scale the walls like Spider-Man.

Constraints: How to Bend Space And Time to Solve Problems Creatively

The biggest hurdle any creative has to overcome is starting out. To overcome this, we need constraints. But arbitrary constraints—that are set for the sake of setting constraints—are useless. We have to learn how to choose the appropriate constraint based on the creative goals we are pursuing.

Work Rules: 25 Ways to Design a Healthy Workplace

A set of guidelines to build a work culture that promotes calm and peace over stress and anxiety.

Why Work Doesn’t Look Like Work

If you are a knowledge worker, your biggest job is thinking. But if all day all night you are busy being busy, ‘thinking’ takes a backseat, and you end up doing a lot of things without getting anything done. You don’t waste the hours, but you waste the years.

The 85% Rule: Why You Should Not Do Your Best

“Do your best and forget about the rest” is good advice. It prevents you from the anxiety of results, but that’s half of the problem. The other half of the problem is the continuous pressure while performing at full-throttle. Truth is, you don’t produce your best work when you give your 100%.

Graceful Context-Switching: The Art & Science of Multitasking Efficiently

As much as everybody—starting from productivity gurus, bloggers, YouTubers, authors, advisors, conference speakers, and ballroom attendees—would like to tell us how unproductive it is, multitasking is here to stay.