productivity-audit

Files (3)

• SKILL.md
• routing.yaml · evals/
• productivity-audit.skill

SKILL.md (first lines)

# Productivity Audit

Productivity is constrained by cognitive fragmentation and tool sprawl, not lack of effort. Optimizing a task that should be eliminated or batched is the primary source of operational friction. A rigorous audit quantifies context-switching costs, audits calendar fragmentation, and consolidates overlapping tools.

## 1. The 3-Dimension Audit Framework

Evaluate a typical 7-day working period across three explicit axes:

### A. Calendar Fragmentation & Context Switching
- **Deep Work Blocks**: Identify continuous blocks of uninterrupted focus (minimum 90 minutes). Fewer than two per day indicates severe fragmentation.
- **Switching Tax**: Count daily context shifts between distinct problem domains (e.g. coding to client calls to hiring reviews). Each domain switch incurs a 15–23 minute cognitive recovery cost.
- **Meeting ROI**: Audit recurring meetings: eliminate status update rituals that can be handled asynchronously via written summaries.

### B. Tool Sprawl & Information Dispersion
- Inventory active software subscriptions and capture tools (Notion, Obsidian, Slack, Trello, Linear, Google Docs, email).
- Identify duplicate capture points: if tasks or ideas live in more than two places, capture discipline fails and tasks get lost.
- Enforce the Single Source of Truth rule: one tool for task tracking, one for long-term reference, one for asynchronous communication.

### C. Energy-Chronotype Alignment
- **Peak Focus Window (e.g. 08:00–12:00)**: Reserved strictly for creative synthesis, complex architecture, or deep coding. No meetings, notifications silenced.
- **Collaborative Window (e.g. 13:00–16:00)**: Synchronous calls, reviews, team syncs.
- **Low-Cognitive Administrative Window (e.g. 16:00–17:30)**: Email processing, expense filing, calendar planning, ticket triage.

## 2. Action Priority Matrix

| Urgency / Ease | High Impact | Low Impact |
|---|---|---|
| **High Ease (Quick Win)** | **Do First**: Batch daily meetings into afternoon blocks; silence push notifications. | **Batch**: Triage email/Slack at 11:30 and 16:30 only; unsubscribe from noise. |
| **Low Ease (Systemic Change)** | **Schedule**: Consolidate tool stack into single task tracker; institute "No-Meeting Wednesday". | **Eliminate**: Kill recurring status meetings; delete abandoned tracking tools. |

## 3. Audit Deliverables
1. **Time-Sink Inventory**: Quantified hours lost weekly to recurring low-leverage tasks.
2. **Context-Switching Penalty**: Visual heatmap of fragmented days showing cognitive friction points.
3. **Tool Consolidation Plan**: Specific migration and deprecation steps to reduce tool overhead.
4. **Target Ideal Week**: Block-scheduled calendar architecture matching tasks to peak biological energy.

## Critical Rules
1. Never recommend adding a new productivity tool until at least one redundant tool is removed.
2. Eliminate before automating, and automate before delegating.
3. Keep daily tracking friction under 5 minutes; if a time-tracking system requires heavy admin overhead, it will rot within two weeks.

## Verification Checklist
- [ ] Quantified baseline hours spent across deep work, meetings, admin, and context switching.
- [ ] Tool stack audited and overlapping tools identified with explicit consolidation paths.
- [ ] Calendar redesign guarantees at least two 90-minute uninterrupted deep work blocks daily.
- [ ] Recurring meetings challenged with asynchronous written alternatives.
- [ ] Implementation plan prioritized by impact versus operational effort.

## Anti-Patterns
- NEVER prescribe complex multi-layered productivity architectures (e.g. over-engineered Notion databases) that take more time to maintain than they save.
- NEVER treat all 8 hours of a workday as interchangeable deep focus time.
- NEVER allow real-time communication channels (Slack/Teams) to dictate daily priority order over structured focus blocks.

From poorvith-mp/skills-personal, MIT.

More from poorvith-mp/skills-personal