My first productivity Setup.

Learning from a Guru.

It all started when I met serial entrepreneur, visionary and policymaker Sam Pitroda on Feb 14, 2008. What at first seemed the regular "take care of the guest" routine given by my then boss Don Manuel, turned out to be one of my life's most exciting and mind opening adventures. Sam quickly surveyed my views on telecom, English proficiency and sense of humour. To this day, I see his charm, intelligence and kindness. Yet, little did I know he poached me to work directly for him for almost a decade.

From the start, Sam had intense schedules with meetings and agreements with multiple actors ranging from civil society to academics and politicians. The number of items he pursued with each one was astonishing, bearing in mind that he did the same in dozens of countries on a regular basis. In my case, I had to take notes, conceptualise projects, present these projects, generate agreements, and follow up until fruition. Many of the projects did come to fruition, while others lagged on, and some, until this day, continue to operate successfully. As you can imagine the amount of agendas, tasks and projects I had to follow through quickly escalated to hundreds.

At one point, things were slipping through the cracks, and we did not have enough resources to add a second person to the team, yet Sam quickly said, "There are techniques you can use, and set followups as an algorithm." He gave me three days.

I googled back in 2008 what was available to organise oneself, from Outlook, calendars, and journalling books, yet nothing seemed to be able to help me handle all of the pending items. Then David Allen's Getting Things Done came across, which resonated with Sam's, "Just plan it. 10 steps to get anything done." Sam had sat hours in the past two months planning projects and teaching me how to visualise projects and steps to get them done. These tools, paired with Getting Things Done, remapped what I could envision for each project and for my own life.

I connected three key things in the first three months of my productivity journey. This was the basic system that organized my office and turbocharged my personal assistant.

1. Capture your thoughts. Always carry a notebook. Sam constantly spoke about how he had journals of his every thought, ordered by time period. He could easily relate to any year in his life by just reviewing the journal of the time. I also learnt always to have a notepad to write whatever pending item needed to get done and key ideas from any meeting. - Always buy a journal you love, whether it is the paper, the design, the size, and/or reminds you of something good.
   

2. Honour your life, honour your time. The only time you have is now, and if you don't plan how you're going to use it, you'll just let it slip through your hands. - Assign time to what matters. Write down any tasks that need to be done, and then block hours for each task every week to complete them. - Use a Calendar app; I love Fantastical because it integrates easily and is highly customisable.
   

3. Review your task list weekly. Sam and I spoke daily to follow up on items and join in on exciting projects he was working on. However, every Monday, we had a follow-up meeting where I proposed using a format with five columns: project-task, Weekly Objective, Weekly Result, Challenge, and Next Steps. This became a staple for all our conversations, as we could easily refer to all the major projects we worked on. - This initial format was done on OmniOutliner, which was quick, and I could have on one file, weekly formats in one file. Super handy. Back then, Omnifocus was nowhere to be seen then.

With this journey, I learned that projects live off the planning and time you assign to their execution. As I reflected on many of these projects and their weekly tasks, Sam's insights on how to untangle, rekindle, and manage issues made me aware of the importance of where and how projects get done. I will speak of this context in my next blog.

In this productivity series, I will present the chronological process through which I evolved from this simple system to having a complex method that includes regular routines, execution guidebooks, an assistant handbook and an envisioning protocol—all of these I've used regularly for the past 16 years. I would argue that what I love most is that I now have the life I want, filled with a loving partner, finishing an exciting PhD in economic urbanism (UNHabitat project) and sharing my life with my friends and close family.

Thank you for reading.