The Productivity Hack I Use Everyday (part 1) | E62

2020 and personal events (friends losing loved ones, a close friend having a baby, noticing his own aging) reminded Bartlett that life is fragile and finite. Instead of spiraling into pessimism, he uses this awareness to strip away trivial concerns—Twitter trolls, petty grudges, superficial status—and double down on health, happiness, and relationships. Practically, this means making decisions as if time is genuinely limited: saying ‘I love you’ more, resolving conflicts, and not postponing important conversations or ambitions.

He argues most people behave as if they will live forever, which leads to tolerating jobs they hate, toxic relationships, and chronic procrastination. His metaphor of the sand timer (which he keeps physically visible) is a prompt to remember that every moment spent on the wrong things is irrecoverable. Actionably, you can adopt a visible time reminder (a timer, countdowns, age charts) and regularly ask: ‘If I really believed I’m on a clock, would I still be doing this right now?’

Bartlett describes life as a set of buckets labeled things like career success, family, meaningful relationships, and also toxic buckets like materialism, social media validation, and fear. Caring is expensive; you only have so much attention to invest. His argument: your life improves when you deliberately care about fewer things but more deeply, pouring energy into a small number of worthy buckets (health, loved ones, memories, purposeful work) and deliberately withdrawing care from shallow or ego-driven pursuits.

Traditional to-do lists feel satisfying but lack time constraints, urgency, and consequences, so tasks expand indefinitely and invite distraction. Bartlett’s hack is to take items from a to-do list and assign each a specific time block in a calendar (he even built a custom app, Timeblock, to combine both). This forces realistic estimates, creates deadlines, and makes it visually obvious when the day is ‘full,’ which reduces time-wasting and procrastination—especially on unstructured days like weekends or during remote work.

His first attempt at time blocking failed because he scheduled unrealistic, punishing days (e.g., 7 AM to midnight with no breaks). He reframed planning as designing a day for ‘future Steve,’ who needs rest, slack, and downtime. Now he intentionally schedules breaks, ‘do nothing’ slots, and leisure activities (watching football, scrolling the internet) into his calendar. The lesson: if your schedule doesn’t match real human energy and motivation, you won’t follow it—so design for sustainability, not fantasy discipline.