Each of the three pillars of the Personal Productivity Framework supports the other two

TTK Framework: design your ideal personal productivity system

Mathew Lowry

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This quick to learn framework helps you build your own personal productivity system without falling into the “productivity porn” trap.

There’s so much out there written about personal productivity that it can be difficult to know where to start. Most set out highly sophisticated systems developed obsessively by their authors over several years, and based around a particular combination of productivity tools.

Which is a problem, because:

  • each system has been honed by the author for the author…
  • but you’re not the author, and — unfortunately — what works for them won’t necessarily work for you
  • moreover, trying to reverse engineer someone else’s finely tuned system risks breaking it apart.

In short: you’re better off developing your own. But where to start?

Build your own productivity system

My mini-course provides a framework for doing just that.

This course therefore does not give you a productivity system “off the shelf”: as set out above, what works for someone else will probably not work for you. What it does is give you a framework with which you can quickly start building your own.

a framework with which you can quickly start building your own personal productivity system

The TTK Framework divides productivity into three pillars (see main image, above), with each pillar supporting the other two:

  • Time management: an “ideal day” ensures you work in synch with your brain’s ability to focus and ringfence your day’s Most Important Task, and carves out time for daily and weekly routines to support ..
  • Task management, which borrows liberally from Getting Things Done (GTD) and integrates it with …
  • Knowledge management: a content pipeline for managing everything from random thoughts to published content, and ensuring you get the most out of what you read, something I’ve written about before:
Building personal knowledge management around a funnel ensures you focus more and more of your time thinking about the most valuable knowledge (Why you need a Personal Content Strategy, September 2017)

Beyond that it’s underpinned by principles such as the 80/20 rule (aka Pareto Principle), and focusing on not getting distracted by endlessly polishing your system rather than actually using it (aka productivity porn).

Most importantly, the TTK Framework is tool-agnostic — use whatever technology best fits your style (and budget).

What do you get?

The core course consists of 5 videos totalling almost one hour, along with a downloadable image to help you get started:

  • Video 1: Introducing the Framework (3m40)
  • Video 2: Time management (3m40): organise your day to maximise productivity
  • Video 3: Task management (17m15): how not to drown
  • Video 4: Personal knowledge management (13m30): how not to drown (again)
  • Video 5: Recap and Synthesis: shows in more detail how the pieces fit together, and provides a walkthrough of the downloadable poster, supplied to help you get on track as you get started (11m30).

There are also a couple of postscripts - last minute additions which I’ll probably turn into posts of their own — and I’ll add supplementary content in response to questions and feedback received (below).

Followups

Those taking the course can ask specific followup questions via dedicated social posts. Otherwise, reach out to me via social: my accounts are listed on my About page. Subscribe to my newsletter while you’re there.

I also curate as well as create content on my Hub, which brings together everything I Like, Think or Do. Everything I read that (probably) had some bearing on this course, for example, can be found in the Productivity Overview. Finally, I also just launched another short course:

More courses will appear over time on https://mathewlowry.gumroad.com/.

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Mathew Lowry
Mathew Lowry

Written by Mathew Lowry

Piloting innovative online communications since 1995. Editor: Knowledge4Policy. Founder: MyHub.ai. Personal Hub: https://myhub.ai/@mathewlowry/