(Enroll in Supercharge Your Productivity by 4/28 and snag $498 in bonuses)

Hal woke up to the gentle purr of his Apple Watch.

He tapped to check his Sleep Score:

• 98 (A record!)
• 3 hours, 13 minutes of Deep Sleep
• 8 hours, 2 minutes of Total Sleep

​

He grabbed two pillows to bolster his lower back and closed his eyes.

“Hey Siri, set a twenty minute timer,” he said as he began his 20 minute TM meditation.

***

Hal is a Business Analytics Lead at one of the major tech companies. Unlike $10 Tim (who we met yesterday), $100 Hal (aka Hundo Hal) is a systems geek who’s read James Clear’s Atomic Habits and David Allen’s Getting Things Done multiple times.

Hundo Hal is an optimizer, a quantifier and a big believer of the Peter Drucker’s mantra, “What gets measured, gets managed.”

One has to look no further than Hundo Hal’s iPhone to see his technological prowess at play:

Hundo Hal likes to brag about his “Tech Stack” — in normie parlance, the apps he uses on a regular basis. Every day he uses:

• Superhuman for email
• Todoist for task management
• Notion for note-taking and personal knowledge management ("PKM")
• Drafts for quick notes
• Instapaper as a read-later app for saving articles
• Readwise to save his Kindle highlights
• SavvyCal for scheduling links
• Toggl for time tracking and Pomodoros

​

Hundo Hal’s phone is set to grayscale to minimize blue light.

His calendar is color-coded in accordance to the $10K Work categories.

And he can access all of his apps via Siri.

(“Hey Siri, remind me to increase my Ethereum auto-invest amount” will automatically create the task in Todoist.)

***

Hundo Hal sits down at his desk and reviews his “Next Actions” for the day. According to his task manager, he’s got 3 live projects:

• Complete buyer analysis for Project Pisces
• Draft write-up for Salesforce RFC
• Prepare Tableau Lunch and Learn
  ​

Hal fires up his 25 minute Pomodoro Timer and starts working on the analysis.

He turns on his chill work playlist “Lo-Fi Hip Hop beats” and checks his resting heart rate.

All systems go.

He can do this work in his sleep. A few SQL queries. Followed by some pivot tables. Then exporting two charts.

He finishes the task without interruption, then checks off his habit tracker.

His heart rate barely moved during that Pomodoro. Hal is well on his way to winning the day… again.

***

While Hundo Hal is eating his lunch (a delish Sweetgreen Harvest Bowl) a notification pops up.

(Strange, Hal thinks to himself. He avoids notifications, badges and pop-ups like the plague.)

It’s from Todoist and the task is confirming that he’s made progress on his Performance Review Feedback.

Hundo Hal has a full document in Notion detailing the project.

The “Meets Expectations” ranking had been a big disappointment to Hal.

His entire life, he's been used to acing tests (well, 1590 on the SATs in 2002) and watching his prodigious work ethic propel his career.

But his manager made it crystal clear - Hal needed to do more than just execute. She argued that Hal was at a point in his career where he needed to “see around corners” and “establish thought leadership.”

But he was most perplexed by the comment:

How on earth was he supposed to do that?

***

Hundo Hal had time-blocked 50 minutes (i.e. 2 Pomodoros) for “Thinking Time.”

He first went to Google and typed:

The results where — underwhelming.

There was a 7 year old free eBook called How to Think Bigger: Aim Higher, Get More Motivated, and Accomplish Big Things.

It was free, so he got it.

The rest were clickbait pieces with cringe-worthy advice like “Use your imagination.”

Thankfully, Hal had another tool he could use — Advanced Search.

He typed in “How to think bigger REDDIT” and then “How to think bigger HACKER NEWS.”

The first result (Reddit) wasn’t so promising:

The next result (Hacker News) was a bit better. There was a mish-mosh of Mark Zuckerberg origin stories, some VC banter and a song-writer with thoughts about a song called “Hillbilly Flamenco.”

Hundo Hal kept plowing through.

He was so good at Pomodoros that he just kept digging deeper and deeper into the forums.

(As Hundo Hal went down these rabbit holes, he was missing some key facts. His dad had founded two companies in EdTech and Logistics, his college roommate was teaching an HBS course on Disruptive Innovation and his girlfriend evaluated grants for the Santa Fe Institute. Each one was a treasure trove of “big thinking” and just a phone call away.)

Ultimately, all the research was synthesized in a handy Notion document.

The plan for big thinking was clear — he was confident he’d nail his next performance review.

The dangers of bike-shedding

Parkinson’s Law of Triviality argues that:

The law was colloquially renamed the bike-shedding effect in the context of a fictitious example of a committee deliberating the build-out of an atomic reactor.

The committee spends 30 minute deliberating the reactor. And then 90 minutes deliberating on the employee bike shed.

Everything is on the table: the bike shed's placement, color and the number of bikes it can store.

It turns out that our lizard brain avoids tasks that are complex. It runs from tasks with uncertain pay-offs and long timelines.

Yup, basically any investment in ourselves will butt heads with bike-shedding.

Bike-shedding perfectly encapsulates $100 work. With his systems, tools and measurements Hundo Hal thinks he is making progress.

But in reality, Hal’s just creating distractions. Sure, he’s miles ahead of $10 Tim — but he too is stuck in the cycle of small thinking.

A cycle that can't be broken by a Notion dashboard or listening to another business podcast.

How Hundo Hal can learn to "Think Bigger"

Hal is stuck in the quadrant of High-Leverage (yet Low-Skill) $100 Work.

It’s a dangerous quadrant because all his activities give the illusion of forward progress.

But they’re just Shiny New Toys.

Shiny New Toys that won’t help you grow your company’s revenue, get that coveted promotion and build personal networks anchored by trust.

A simple first step for Hal is to move into the $1,000/hr quadrant.

Hal needs to build new skills (and not accumulate new apps). Skills that can boost his income and make his career anti-fragile. His performance review was spot on — there are many skills that transcend industries such as public speaking, leadership, negotiation and networking.

These — not the plethora of productivity apps on his phone — are what truly moves the needle.

***

Sign up for Supercharge Your Productivity (and get $498 in bonuses)

If you're done with the bike-shedding and want to learn a powerful way to rethink and reset priorities, Supercharge Your Productivity is the course for you.

During our live 4-week course, you'll learn how to:

• Stay focused on the most important things in life
• Think bigger (versus making smaller things better)
• Stop putting things off until some imaginary future date
• Invest in improving your mind, career and relationships

​

Plus, if you enroll by April 28th (Noon EDT) you’ll receive our two most popular courses (a bonus valued at $498): The GTD Power-Pack and The Fulfilling Path to Financial Independence.

👉 Enroll in Supercharge Your Productivity (and get $498 in bonuses)​

Tomorrow, you'll meet $1K Juan (aka "One K Juan"). Unlike Hal, $1K Juan has parlayed above-average systems into a prestigious law career - but he's still stuck on the hamster wheel.

If you have any questions about the course, just hit reply. Our team is standing by and will get back to you ASAP.

With gratitude,

Khe

PS Did you know we've got an Executive Edition which includes an additional 4 weeks of Group Coaching with Khe (that's capped at 10 students)? It's the only coaching I've done since 2020 and you'll get individualized feedback on your $10K Work plan.

PPS Want to skip our launch emails and stay subscribed to the Saturday newsletter? Just click here, we'll remove you.