Hey, everyone, and welcome to developer team. My name is Jonathan Cottrell. And in today's episode, I'm going to be giving you my top productivity tip. It's called a fallback productivity list. Today's episode is brought to you by spec. If you're a designer or a developer, and you're looking to level up your career spec.fm is the place to go. We have tons of content that is made directly for you specifically for you. To learn how to become better in your career. So go and check it out spec.fm. That is the podcast and content network that developer T is a part of. Now, if you all don't know, I do quite a lot in a given day, I have developer T, that I record three episodes a week for but I also have a full time job. I lead a team of developers at whiteboard. And I have a ton of other things going on outside of work as well. And to have so many things going on in a given day, it may seem a little bit daunting. But in this process, I've learned a lot about productivity. And I want to share with you what I consider to be my number one productivity tip. And I don't like saying productivity tip very often on the show, because there's so many other podcasts that are about productivity. And we spend a lot of our energy trying to figure out what the secrets are to being productive. And truly, I don't think there are many secrets to being productive. In fact, the most productive people are the ones who stick with whatever it is that they are doing until it's done. And all the things that we have around this ways of trying to make ourselves do more in a given amount of time, that ultimately relies on our commitment to getting something done. There are no shortcuts when it comes to productivity. Most of the time, it just comes down to being disciplined, and actually spending the time and energy that we have to be productive. on the right things. Now, that is the part that I want to talk to you about today, spending the time that you have on the right things. Because there's a lot of people who have an iron will, they have the fortitude that it takes to be a productive person. But as we've said on this show before, if you don't focus your energy in one place, if you have 100 different places that your energy is going to, because you're not really sure where to put it, then you ultimately end up staying in basically a different place. the same spot that you started in. So this isn't a productivity hack, but rather, it's a method for finding the best place to put your energy. And this isn't a particularly novel idea, either. I didn't come up with this. It's not a special format or anything like that. It's something that people have been doing for years. And really, it comes down to prioritization. So this is the process. Step one is to write down everything that you have to do everything small to large, and don't try to separate between work and home. Write down everything that you have to do. Maybe you have a particular project that you need to hit a milestone on. And then maybe you have a doctor's appointment. And maybe you want to go on a date tonight. There are so many things that you can put on this list. But I want you to put it all on a single list. And once you have completed this list to an exhaustive extent, and I mean, anything that you've been thinking about doing for a long period of time, cleaning out the closets, everything should be on this list. Once you've completed this list, I want you to go through and put an X next to the things that are non-negotiable, the things that absolutely have to be done. For example, some non-negotiables for most people include taking their children to school, or perhaps driving to work. These are very, obviously, they're flat overhead. You can't get past doing those things. For me, another non-negotiable is getting these episodes recorded. I have to get these episodes recorded. And so a lot of my other priorities end up falling around that specific thing. Next, I want you to prioritize the entire list, including the non-negotiables. Of course, the non-negotiables are all going to be at the top. But I want those to also be listed in order of priority. So maybe you have five things that are non-negotiable. Those are going to be listed numbers one through five. But even within those non-negotiables, you're going to have one thing that is more important than another. It absolutely has to be done, maybe even more than another one of your non-negotiable items. Because the reality is, sometimes we have more non-negotiable things than we have time in a day. And this is when we start feeling overwhelmed, where we feel like there's not enough time in the day, when we have more things that we absolutely have to do, than we have time in the day to finish those things. Now, there's a little bit of a difference between non-negotiable and non-negotiable. There's a little tip kind of hidden in this. If you consistently find yourself with more non-negotiable things than you have time in your day, then you're probably going to end up in a situation of unhealthy stress, and you most likely need to slim down the number of things you're committed to. In other words, the word non-negotiable means something, right? You have to do these things. And if you have to do more than you can do, then that's an imbalance. You're going to ultimately end up feeling more and more uncomfortable. You're going to end up feeling more and more uncomfortable. And if you have to do more than you can do, then that's an imbalance. You're going to ultimately end up feeling more and more uncomfortable. You're going to end up feeling more and more uncomfortable. And if you have to do more than you can do, then that's an imbalance. You're going to ultimately end up feeling more and more uncomfortable. You're going to end up feeling more and more uncomfortable. And if you have to do more than you can do, then that's an imbalance. You're going to ultimately end up feeling more and more uncomfortable. You're going to end up feeling more and more uncomfortable. And if you have to do more than you can do, then that's an imbalance. You're going to ultimately end up feeling more and more uncomfortable. You're going to end up feeling more and more uncomfortable. And if you have to do more than you can do, then that's an imbalance. You're going to ultimately end up feeling more and more uncomfortable. You're going to end up feeling more and more uncomfortable. And if you have to do more than you can do, then that's an imbalance. You're going to ultimately end up feeling more and more uncomfortable. You're going to end up feeling more and more uncomfortable. And if you have to do more than you can do, then that's an imbalance. You're going to ultimately end up feeling more and more uncomfortable. You're going to end up feeling more and more uncomfortable. And if you have to do more than you can do, then that's an imbalance. You're going to end up feeling more and more uncomfortable. You're going to end up feeling more and more uncomfortable. And if you have to do more than you can do, then that's an imbalance. You're going to end up feeling more and more uncomfortable. You're going to end up feeling more and more uncomfortable. And if you have to do more than you can do, then that's an imbalance. You're going to end up feeling more and more uncomfortable.