Network Effects in Personal Productivity

#Productivity

Just like many of us, I juggle a seemingly endless list of day-to-day activities: work-related & personal projects, hobbies, sports, and a ton of other things that I desperately try to fit in between my self-time and time with my family & friends.

Most of the time, I try hard to keep my life & activity scopes somewhat balanced and not allow any single activity to seize all my time.

Most of the time, I fail. With limited hours in a day, balance feels like an impossible goal, and we inevitably end up in a lose-lose situation:

It all looks like a frustrating choice: focus entirely on one thing and sacrifice a well-rounded life, or aim for balance and still feel like you’re falling short.

Trying to solve this problem, I came across a nice trick, which I call the activity scopes network effect.

Network Effects & Life Areas

A network effect is originally an economics term meaning a phenomenon when some good, product, or service's value for end-users depends positively on the overall number of users.

In other words, the more users it has, the more value it brings to every user. Network effects can be observed in all social networks, marketplaces, messengers, cell phones, etc.

The problem is that we are not scalable. We are limited in our primary resource - time.

That's why when dealing with our multiple activity scopes, what we actually face is a kinda negative network effect. The more activities we add, the faster we degrade until we get completely overwhelmed, just like a web-service under heavy load.

How to fix it?

The idea is to build interconnected activity scopes that create a positive network effect between them.

So every minute spent on any project would be automatically reinvested in other activities, creating positive feedback loops that will eventually result in organic progress in all related activity scopes.

Examples of Interconnected Activity Scopes

For the last few years, I've been applying that idea in my work and skills building. Here are some examples of positive feedback loops that I've built and use around my work & hobbies

Notes & Blog

A few years ago I started to take notes as a hobby: About These Notes

Note taking as a [[writing]] habit is a rather fulfilling activity by itself, but I wanted to get some extra value out of it. I started to take notes following a Zettelkasten framework, which allows me to bring together related ideas and compile them into new ones that can gradually develop into blog posts.

English Classes on Autopilot

I'm not a native English speaker nor living in an English-speaking country. That's why I need to constantly force myself into practice to maintain a good level of language. Otherwise, it degrades.

That's why I take notes in English and write these blog posts in English. Not only this but I also read and even procrastinate on YouTube in English.

That's just a simple thing that doesn't require much additional effort as it is a part of what I already do, but it saves me a ton of time that would have been needed for attending extra English classes.

English & Writing Skills Payback

For me, as a software engineer working on an independent contractor basis with clients from all over the world, my English and writing skills are crucial. It directly affects my ability to land contracts, understand clients' needs, communicate with colleagues, and do my job well.

Closing the Loop

When looking for contracts, I always try to pick those that would bring me at least a couple of challenges. It would automatically force me to learn new things by doing them and become better as a professional.

Challenges may also bring some food for thinking and taking notes about. It may evolve into a new blog post or open-source projects that may also be written about.

The blog increases the funnel of people I bump into: it acquires traffic for side projects and may assist in landing new contracts.

Better contracts -> more money -> more money invested -> more space and time for pet projects -> new skills -> post more -> find even better contracts -> more challenges -> ... etc.

I think you got the idea.