Uber Engineer: This Is the Most Important Tool for Productivity

Answer by Pedram Keyani, Engineering Director of Growth at Uber, on Quora.

If you think of your time and attention as the most scarce resource then your calendar is the most important tool in your arsenal. You must make sure you control your calendar and that it doesn’t control you.

Alignment
This may sound obvious but is worth saying anyways. If you have goals and a mission that you are responsible for (all of us do) and you don’t have time allocated in your work week to accomplishing those goals then you aren’t aligned with yourself. Block off times to dedicate yourself to the things that matter.

Defragmentation
Be thoughtful of how you string together meetings and calls so that you have big blocks of time and aren’t just scrambling around from meeting to meeting.

Say No
Every single meeting request adds up. If you look out at your calendar for a month from now it is probably pretty clean (with the exception of repeating meetings) but your current week is probably a mess. The reason it gets that way is because of all the small little meetings and requests that pile up to become a “lost” week. Learn to say no. Better yet, learn to ask “what is the goal of this meeting? Is there a way to accomplish that without taking 30 minutes?” and then if the meeting still needs to happen make sure everyone is engaged and that the output is what you were hoping for.

Reboot
Certain meetings continue to live on out of habit. Evaluate them and make sure they are adding value to everyone and/or that the right people are in the room (yourself included.) If a meeting is on there but no value add be the brave person who asks “Is this meeting still worth having?” It is worth looking over your calendar and how you spend your time on a regular basis. Ineffectiveness is not a state that you step into all at once, it happens over a thousand small decisions over many weeks and months.

Decompress
The most effective people are not the ones who work 100 hours a week. They are the ones who know how to make the best use of their time. A part of that is being fresh and having a sharp mind. Using your brain is just like exercise, you can’t sprint and sprint and sprint without taking a break otherwise you will collapse or your “sprint” will actually look like a crawl from the outside. Most people get sidetracked with the Internet, Facebook, online games, etc. at some point in the day and usually they feel guilty about it which adds more stress and tension and doesn’t serve the benefit that it is supposed to. Schedule a few times throughout the day to read a book, listen to music, take a walk, take a nap, go for a run, etc. Investing 15-20 minutes a few times a day will ultimately make you more effective during the rest of the time.

Controlling your time is the key.

This question originally appeared on Quora: What are some little-known productivity tips from various professions?

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