Increasing Self Productivity by 99% via 6TPD Rule
By: Zaki Yamani Zakaria
Tags: Checklist, Self Help, Efficiency, Effectiveness, Increase Productivity

How I Stay Productive Every day?

Background

It is interesting to see how the society function around us. We live with many kinds of people with various traits, activities, attitudes, believes, and interest. We can easily notice this if we take some time to observe two or three people around us.

Once in a while I love to observe people that I know and strangers that I have no clue of their background. It is very interesting observing them as I can learn about them, what they do, what their action and reaction towards something and consecutively do my own reflection based on personal observation. From here we can continuously improve ourselves.

There are many types of people out there. In the context of this article, I categorize people into two types: (1) People with a lot of free time (relax) and (2) People with a lot of responsibilities (busy). Plenty can be discussed from these two types. Both have their own stories and perks.

I would also further segment people into two kinds, which are (1) genius, and (2) ordinary. The reason I did this is because once again, I observed people around me. I am working in a place where there are plenty of highly intelligent people, as I work in a university.

To make it even more competitive, it is one of the top university in my country and the university I am at working at is a research university status. It is amazing to see so many genius people around me at work, plenty of them who excelled superbly in their tertiary education up till their highly decorated successes in their career.

Being employed as an academician specializing in chemical engineering, I am also demanded to achieve numerous key performance indicators (KPI) from all sort of levels and directions. I find myself to be in the “people with a lot of responsibilities” type, which after this I will just use the term busy; and also the “ordinary” kind.

Since I fall under both of the unfavorable types, I cannot afford to just lay back and just be a spectator witnessing people around me marching with success. I cannot be ordinary. I need to move forward. I know that I need to work harder, in fact double or triple harder than others in order to produce spectacular outcomes.

That is when I feel that I need to be more productive than before. Like anyone else, I only have 24 hours a day. But I know I need to be able to produce and deliver more. I need to make my results and products do all the shouting. But how could I do or achieve this?

Few years back, I read an incredible book — The 10X Rule by Grant Cordone. We were taught to set targets 10 times greater than what we believe we can achieve and to take actions that are 10 times greater than what we believe are necessary to achieve our goals.

Cordone’s message was strong and anyone who can successfully apply it is a winner. I realized that we need to multiply our believes and actions to produce dazzling outputs. It’s partly from this book that inspired me to think bigger and out of the box. If I cannot be up to Cordone’s standard, I need to establish a reasonable standard I can follow consistently and keep on growing.

Being in a world where social media presence always hijacks our precious time to do work, I know that I need to have my own formula to overcome this, not to be a victim of social technologies. Not to suffer from unproductive life. I need to device a simple yet powerful recipe that can work for me (and perhaps for others too).

6TPD Rule Concept

My immediate solution is very simple and straight forward. I just need to plan and organize my limited time as wise and as strategic possible. Brian Tracy in his book “Eat that Frog” and and Mohd Daud Bakar in his book “I Have 25 Hours a Day” gave me some insights, strategies and motivation on how to complete more tasks, cleverly. I integrated some of their methods and wisdoms, and design it to suit myself.

That’s when I created my own version set of rule, the 6TPD Rule. It simply means 6 Tasks Per Day rule. The concept is simply to perform, complete or execute 6 selected tasks, jobs, activities in a single day.

Why 6 and not 5 or 4 or any other digit?

The digit is just a number assigned to how many tasks we are capable to humanly accomplish per day. It is subjective. It can be different from one person to another person.

A very highly efficient person could designate his version of 11TPD Rule and accomplish far more than a person who sets himself to be a 4TPD Rule. You define your own “X”TPD Rule. There is no point to be rigid or limit yourself.

Sometimes, you set 6TPD Rule, but in a very productive day, you can complete 12 tasks. That’s fine. Nothing wrong with that. However there will be days that only 3 tasks could be accomplished. Again, it is just a number, a guide for your subconscious mind or a daily goal for you to achieve. But the most important point is that you strive your best to accomplish 6 or more tasks per day, which eventually the average will reflect 6 tasks per day.

Let say once you set yourself to the 6TPD Rule consistently and manage to stick to the plan for 2 months, you can upgrade yourself to 7TPD Rule or even more. You know yourself better and you know your own potential. Hence, you decide the best that works for you.

The figures below show examples of the list that I made everyday using my mobile phone note app, which then I crossed the tasks once I have done it. Every time I cross a task, I felt boosted, motivated and excited. It made me want to keep on working and crossing more tasks. This indicates that my dopamine hormone, the motivation molecule, is flourishing positively in my body.

Dopamine is our achievement hormone. The higher the hormone concentration, the higher will be our focus, alertness, creativity and long-term memory. Dopamine drives us to seek rewards in achieving goals and position us to be in the fight mode effort to be successful.

Measuring Productivity

The quantification of productivity in the self help segment is debatable. There are no specific methods to measure it. It is not as simple as a mathematical formula that you can know the answer swiftly. It is also not a simple programming that you can insert data to your coding and then yield the output data within seconds.

Human like us have certain tasks and responsibilities which gets bigger and heavier as we grow. When we were kids, our main duty is to study besides enjoying our childhood activities. The day we graduated from university, that marks the commencement of a more serious business. Older generation will say to young graduates, “Welcome to the real world”. Sigh.

But, still we never really measure productivity. Me included. Early last year, I gave it a serious thought. To keep moving forward, we need to measure productivity as best as we can. Car manufacturing companies measure their productivity by quantifying the number of cars they produce and sell per day, per month and per year (just a simple example). Same goes for other businesses or organizations.

So, I felt it is better to have a number of tasks that we used to complete on average for the past months or years, as a benchmark. This is important data that you can easily trace if you have a proper record, either in your to do list, note book, laptop, blog or anywhere.

Before this I believe, I am at 3 to 4 tasks per day. Maybe because at that time, my responsibilities are less and I am relatively younger. However, as we grew and became more matured, more appointments, more projects, more responsibilities are given whether we like it or not. This was when I felt that 24 hours a day was not enough.

I considered 3 tasks a day as my personal benchmark based on my previous performance. I doubled that amount and it became 6 tasks per day, which is basically the 6TPD Rule I devoted to. In my mind, whenever I can, I will attempt more than six, if circumstances permit.

When I first implemented 6TPD Rule, it was a shaky start. It was tough mentally and psychologically because I pushed myself (out of my comfort zone). However, as times goes by I began to better grasp the philosophy of it. I became more comfortable and turned to be more driven.

I noticed that I can double what I accomplished per day compared to the point where I initially benchmarked myself. It is worth it. My personal productivity literally doubled. Truly, it is very simple, yet powerful. It’s possible and realistic.

Lets look at how we can accomplish the 6TPD Rule. There are simple steps that can be followed to ensure the success of the method. The steps are elaborated below:

Make A List

It all starts with making a list of tasks to do. Every day I jot down a list of tasks I need to do. I will do it either before I sleep at night or very early in the morning. By doing this, my subconscious mind has set myself to perform predetermine tasks to be executed immediately next day in the morning.

When I list down my tasks, it will comprise of official tasks and sometimes unofficial tasks such as personal or house chores that I need to do. When I list down my tasks, it will usually be as low as 10 but sometimes as high as 20 tasks per day. It depends on the situation at that particular time. Every moment is different, but the game plan is the same.

Do not complicate this step. It is very simple. You can use a note book, paper, your note aps in your mobile phone or anything that you can list down your tasks. For me, it is seasonal. Sometimes I write my list tasks in a book and sometimes in my note aps in my mobile phone. List as many as possible tasks that you want to do or to achieve in that particular day.

2. Take Action — Just Do It!

Now that you already have that list, you can target which one to execute first. You should start taking action. Be discipline, responsible and accountable to yourself. This is your tasks and you need to perform them. Normally, I will dwell with it one by one until I managed to cross at least 6 to 10 of them per day.

What I meant by cross is that I marked the tasks as done. It is ok for me not to be able to cross all of the tasks in a particular day, if the lists are too long. The fact that I managed to complete 6 to 10 tasks per day is considered a massive achievement and a productive day for me.

Most of the time it is quite impossible to complete all tasks since we have other routine official and unofficial tasks to perform. Sometimes, on a particular day, I managed to cross more than 10 tasks, whereas sometimes I could only do 3 tasks. Again, it depends on what happen on that day since other responsibilities are there plus sudden unplanned important events sometimes hijack the time.

3. Focus and Consistency

This part is easier said than done. It is not easy to stay focus and be consistent if we do not have a clear goal in mind what to achieve in that particular day. More often, the tasks that we want to perform could be small components of our short term goals. The more tasks you complete, the more closer we are to our short term goals.

On contrary, sometimes the listed tasks are normal chores such as repairing sink in the toilet, servicing the car, making donation to an organization, calling someone to discuss something and so on. My point here is, whatever you have listed in Step 1, just focus to perform the tasks, and do it consistently till you managed to cross more than 6 tasks that day.

Believe me, being consistent to cross 6 tasks per day means you successfully complete performing 42 tasks per week; 180 tasks per month; 2190 tasks per year.

If your efficiency is down by 10%, it is still good enough because you will be completing 162 tasks per month and 1971 tasks per year, which is still better than NOT having a clear plan of action. If your efficiency is up by 10%, that is excellent as you will accomplish 198 tasks per week and 2409 tasks per year. This is an interesting way of looking at the overall concept right?

Since “focus and consistency” plays a huge role in the 2nd step that is “taking action”, I would like to break down the discussion into smaller pieces, so that it is easily digestible and easier to be done.

3.1 Wake up early & complete half of the tasks before afternoon. By doing this, you will feel the sense of satisfaction and joy as you have completed quite a number of tasks. Imagine the pressure if you start to work on your list after lunch time, you will indulge yourself in unnecessary stress.

3.2 Complete the most important tasks before afternoon. This is the imperative message conveyed by Brian Tracy in his best selling book. I’ve tried this a lot and it gave me sense of relieve after finally settling the most challenging part in the list, ie. to eat the frog.

Often, among the listed tasks, there will be one task that applies to 20–80 rule as stated by Ryan Tate in his book The 20% Doctrine. That particular task resemble merely 20% but in actual fact it had covered 80% of the overall commitment for the day.

3.3 Limit social media moment while working on the list. When you start dealing with the tasks, put your mobile phone away and do not open the social media browser. Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, Linkedin will not run away from you. Just be patient till you complete most of the listed tasks, then later in the day you can read updates / reply comments on your social media account.

3.4 Segment huge task into several smaller fragments. Sometimes you work on a big project that it is impossible to be completed in a day. This project or task may require 3 months or 7 months or 1.5 years or 3 years. It doesn’t matter.

Break it down into smaller segments. If the smaller segments need to be broken down into tinier segments, just do it. For example, you probably are a full time research student who need to do your master thesis in 2 years time. Plan carefully your 2 years research work and break it down in to several parts.

3.5 Reward yourself. Every one needs a motivation. Hence, let say after successfully completing 6 activities within 7 consecutive days, you can reward yourself with something of great value, inline with your goal or simply some relaxation moment.

The 5 above mentioned points hopefully can guide you to stay focus and consistent towards making you sharp and sensible when executing the listed tasks.

4. Be Creative & Innovative

Being creative and innovative strategy can also be used for other purpose for yourself. There are various approaches and benefits from the 6TPD Rule implementation such as:

4.1 Developing new habits. There will be time you want to transform something to be your habit or routine. Include them in your daily list, do it consistently, until it becomes a routine, than omit it.

A simple example would be exercising 5 minutes a day. It is not easy to do this for some people even though they know the importance of it. Hence, if you include it in the list, you may want to do it once and for all for that day. And after the 5 minutes exercise, you can slash that task just like that.

Repeat the same thing tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. After 2 or 3 weeks, it will appear to be a routine for you. You no longer need to list 5 minutes exercise in your list. It really help us to nurture the discipline and character within our self.

4.2 It will eventually be done. Do not worry for the listed tasks that are not completed on a particular day. There will be tomorrow for you to cross that incomplete tasks. Normally this is the kind of tasks that are not important and not urgent.

Re-list it again. Just recycle it and crush them on a brand new fresh day. Recycle them repeatedly until you execute them. This always happen to me and I will keep on relisting the tasks. Eventually, it will be crossed and disappear from my next list.

4.3 List an activity that you don’t want to commit . There maybe some activities that is very natural to you, that you are always motivated to do but it’s NOT GOOD for you. You can list that too in the 6TPD Rule.

List it as “Not to do that activity” and train yourself not to do it. For instance, “Not to eat junk food”, “Not to sleep in the morning”, “Not to smoke cigarette”, “Not to spend more than 1 hour on social media in the morning”, “Not to watch TV — more than 2 hours per day” etc… Once you manage not to do it on that day, you can cross that item. It will be help you be a better version of yourself.

Concluding Remarks

The list of tasks can be a great mixed between office jobs, personal, family and friend stuffs. It’s really up to you to custom the 6TPD Rule. Be flexible. Yeah… just be flexible. Stay positive. Know your short, medium and long term goals. With this you will always be on high alert and your activities will have the right navigation.

The most important thing here is to be able to accomplish 6 or more tasks per day so you make your life more productive and meaningful. It’s your life and you know what matters the most in your life. Go ahead and design your own version of 6TPD Rule.

All the best. Stay productive!