How I stay productive. My day.

A few days ago, I watched a vlog by Casey Neistat in which he talked about his perspective on productivity and how the hours in his day were divided among different types of activities. I found it very interesting because I divide my day in a very particular way. Unlike most people, I do not have a fixed schedule or need to be at the office all the time. I have, however, established a routine for dividing my working hours that I want to share below.

I will begin by saying that I am a highly productive person, not only because of the hours I devote to working during the day, but because I work very quickly. By watching others perform similar activities, I can compare myself and know that I am up to twice as fast as most of the people with whom I have had the opportunity to collaborate. This allows me to do more activities than others and work on multiple projects at the same time. I have had a digital creative studio for years. Recently, my partners and I started a second company, an innovation and design studio. In addition, Nydia and I have a social media platform that promotes events and cultural and entertainment venues. On top of all that, I need time for my personal projects and my hobbies—which are numerous. So far, I have managed to meet all my commitments thanks to the speed at which I work. That speed is not a special skill; it is simply a great capacity to concentrate on the task before me. When I am in concentration mode, I cannot interact with other people. I cannot interrupt what I am doing to chat or listen to what someone has to tell me. I have a single objective: to finish the task at hand. Because of this way of concentrating, I personally do not find it easy to work in an office, where I am susceptible to interruptions and vulnerable to other people's demands for attention. That is why I do most of my work from home. I do go to the office every day to review pending matters, meet with my team, and provide face-to-face feedback, but most of the time I need to be outside the office to complete my activities.

I know that having no fixed schedule and not spending much time inside an office is not for everyone. Some people need a more traditional or perhaps more structured working method, although, as I will show below, there is considerable structure and intention behind the way I work. It is not something I devised. This way of dividing my time emerged over the years and became a routine that works very well for me.

• My day normally begins at 7 AM. I like to have a coffee and start answering email, reviewing pending items, and organizing the day's activities. This takes me two hours.
• From 9 to 11 AM, I train. I like running. It is something I started doing a few years ago and that has become a very important part of my life. I take it very seriously, and it is my passion. My training is sacred. It is the part of my day I am least willing to move or change; I cannot do without it. Training keeps me healthy, helps me manage stress, and gives me discipline and purpose. I use this time to run and go to the gym, sometimes only to run. On occasions when I have to run long distances, it can take more time. Every other activity in the day has to revolve around this one. I schedule meetings, appointments, visits, and other commitments so they do not interfere with my training. The time at which I train is also important. After trying many different times, I have discovered that this one is perfect for me because I have been awake for a couple of hours, I am fully active without being tired, and it is early enough not to interfere too much with my activities.
• After training, I work. I prefer to do this part of the day from home.
• I take a couple of hours during the day to eat with Nydia. I have made it my goal always to eat with her. We watch some television while we eat, rest a little, then I wash the dishes and do some cleaning around the house.
• In the afternoon, I work. I use this time to review pending matters at the office. I also try to schedule all my appointments and meetings in this block because by the afternoon the day's most urgent matters have already been resolved.
• Walking the dogs is an activity I try to do every day. It is not always possible, and when it is not, that is because the afternoon and evening work blocks have merged into one. But I do try to do it daily, taking them to the park for an hour, because it is good for them and helps me clear my mind.
• The final work block at night lasts two hours, but it often extends to three and is a period of intense concentration. This is when I take the opportunity to solve complex problems or carry out the day's most demanding tasks.
• Afterward, I have three or four hours for myself: watching television, reading, checking my social media, writing, or doing any activity related to my personal projects.

I estimate that on a normal day, I work around 10 hours, and I get a great deal out of them thanks to the pace at which I work. For me, the advantage of dividing the day this way is avoiding stretches of more than three or four hours of work. The blocks between work periods allow me to clear my mind and recharge. I divided the schedule above into colors so that red represents work and blue represents personal time. Training is in another color because it is personal time during which I am actually working: many of my ideas, solutions to problems, and strategies arise precisely during this period of concentration, when my mind is working just as intensely as my body.

This routine never becomes tedious because it happens naturally and is not strict. Sometimes I need to work for five hours straight to solve something, and the time blocks adjust. At other times, I cannot concentrate and need to take a morning or an afternoon off.

Weekends are much less structured. Although I try not to work much, there are always a few hours of work during the weekend, usually while I am waiting to do something or while I am otherwise unoccupied.

Something I feel helps me greatly in maintaining an intense working pace is the variety of what I do. At present, my working time is divided more or less as follows:

• 30% on creativity (designing, finding solutions to problems, making plans and strategies)
• 30% on production (web development and content creation)
• 30% on administration (various administrative tasks arising from my work)
• 10% on public relations (acting as a liaison with clients)

These percentages have emerged naturally and have allowed me to maintain a good balance between work that requires inspiration—60% creativity and production—and work that does not—40% administration and public relations. This way, when I do not feel inspired, I can switch to activities that do not require inspiration, and vice versa.

When I started my studio, LABPROY, I created it as a lifestyle business. In other words, the central idea behind how it operates is that it should allow me to have the lifestyle I want in terms of money and time. Nydia and I are the main driving force behind that business, but we can work from anywhere in the world. We control our own time and schedules. The new DEMENTE studio has a more formal structure, with partners, offices, and employees, but there I am not the main driving force; I am one cog in the machine. I can therefore continue working from anywhere in the world and remain in control of my time and schedule without harming the structure of the business. This freedom is the most important thing to me. I would never participate in a business or create a company that required me to keep fixed office hours. I simply cannot work that way, and besides being unable to, I do not enjoy it.

Personally managing working time and setting priorities is difficult for many people. I therefore understand that this way of working may seem disorganized or complicated, but as I said at the beginning, I am highly productive when I work this way. I am certain that many people's low productivity is due to being trapped in a work arrangement that is not ideal for them. We are not all the same. We do not all learn in the same way, and we do not all work in the same way.