How to Get More Work Done per Year

Understanding and optimizing productivity using math

2 min readFeb 1, 2019

Here is a fairly broad definition of work: a deliberate and beneficial change that persists over time.
Example: this post is a change as it didn’t exist in the past and now it does. It is also (hopefully) beneficial and will persist over time.

work done per year ≈ E x H x D

E = efficiency = average amount of work done per hour,

H = average number of hours worked per work day,

D = number of work days per year.

Tips for increasing productivity:

Plan: doing something and then later realizing that it was not worth doing can waste a huge amount time.
Prioritize: 20% of your work often has 80% of the impact.
Pay Attention: be as focused as possible. Distractions waste time.
Don’t Multitask: Do one thing at a time if possible. Multitasking reduces productivity because time is wasted every time you switch tasks.
Practice: improve your skills in the activity so that you are faster.
Avoid perfectionism: perfectionism tends to waste time because of diminishing returns; improving from good to perfect can consume as much time as going from zero to good. (though in some cases you may need perfection at all costs)
Break up projects: turn large intimidating projects into a list of manageable sub tasks to prevent becoming overwhelmed and stalling.
Simplify: make tasks as simple and understandable as possible to avoid time-wasting confusion.
Note: increasing productivity is preferable to increasing the amount of time you invest in an activity because you get more done without any extra time being consumed.

Ways to spend more time on work:

increase the average number of hours worked per day.
increase the number of work days per year.
Note: you will get more done if you spend more time working but since you could have spent this time on something else, there is an opportunity cost.