If you improve your productivity by one percent per day for seventy-two days in a row, you’ll become twice as productive. Yeah, that surprises me too. Math isn’t my thing (see the endnote).

Just finding that small thing each day and implementing a change means that you’ll be twice as productive in just two and a half months—that kind of blows my mind.

What if I really could get twice as much done as I can right now by making very small changes? What if that were to happen by this summer?

That kind of thinking makes me queasy. I’m not even sure what I’d do with my time, if I could get my existing work done in half the time it takes now. I’ve already rewatched all the seasons of The West Wing.

Before you start, do the productivity math

An eight-hour workday is 480 minutes long. One percent of that is 4 minutes and 48 seconds. That’s what we’re looking to save each day.

Round it up to five minutes and you’ll fully grasp what we’re searching for here. Five minutes is trivial. You’ve spent more time than that doing the extra hand-washing required by the pandemic.

It doesn’t take much to find a five-minute per-day time saver. You’ll find the savings in simple places like interactions with others, or with technology, or in complicated systems and processes. The slightest tweaks to your interactions with bureaucracy might save you many multiples of five minutes, and over time, they will add up.

The opportunities are hiding in plain sight

Jumping on the productivity bandwagon is easy. Finding something specific to improve each day is much harder.

I’m committed to finding the one percent. I’m guessing you can muster the commitment as well. Doubling our productivity in seventy-two days is too tempting to simply ignore.

Where are the opportunities for improvement? How do we find the small issues to resolve, so that we can get that one percent seventy-two days in a row?

There are four places to look. You’ll find your potential time savings in these hiding spots. One percent isn’t much. You’ll find what you need when you go looking. Inefficiency, ineffectiveness, bloated systems, failed processes–they’re everywhere you look. They’re hiding in plain sight.

Here are the one percent hiding spots.

1. The things you already know

Let’s start with some low-hanging fruit and address the productivity optimizations you already know you need to make, and have been putting off until the right time.

We all have a list of the obvious changes we need to make. We’re holding off because change is uncomfortable. We do what we do because it’s what we do. Doing something different means making an adjustment. We’re always looking for the right moment to make the change, and it never comes.

If you’re committed now to finding the one percent per day–well, the time just arrived.

You’ll need to go ahead and fire that employee, get rid of that paper, buy that piece of technology, or switch vendors. Maybe you need to go ahead and hand off your taxes to a professional or move to the new office space or leave your kid at a fire station. (No, don’t do that. I found out it’s only legal for about a week after birth. After that you have to keep them.)

There are probably ten things you’re hanging on to even though you’ve known forever that they’re holding you back. The hunt for the one percent is just what you need to motivate you to make the change.

2. Your email box

Your email box tells a story about you. It’s a reflection of you. We’ve all got our own approach to the inbox.

I’m not going to tell you how to manage email (we’ve got another article for that), but I will tell you that the state of your email is like a mirror for your soul.

That list of emails you haven’t yet read tells you something. So do the emails you’ve deleted without reading. The long list of emails you read and then deleted without a response tells you something more. Your priorities are revealed by the manner in which you address each incoming email.

There are some easy wins in your inbox. You can stop getting emails you don’t need. Unsubscribe or create a rule or batch up the cruft or use a product like Sanebox. Use more (or some) filters. There are emails in the box that shouldn’t be coming to you and which you ignore or delegate every time they arrive. There are emails you need to send, but haven’t. The history found in your email box invariably surfaces lots of opportunities for improving technology. It’s all hidden in that box. Now is the time to start hunting for the moves you need to make to grab the one percent for today.

The first time you scroll back through your old email, you’ll see a few small maneuvers you can make to grab back one percent in each of the first few days. You’re only looking for five minutes a day, so the unsubscribe button will get you what you need on day one. Then you might decide to delegate your inbox to someone who can reply for you. These small steps will put more one percent gain days behind you as you jet toward seventy-two days of productivity.

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But, the big gains–the next ten or more one percent moves–will also be found in your email. You’ll harvest your gains by looking into that email box mirror and recognizing the conflicts between your priorities and your time commitments. Your focus will be revealed as you recognize where your time is being spent. Count the words you’re reading, the words you’re writing, the words you’re ignoring, and see how that use of your energy matches up with your effort to get where you’re going. What does your inbox tell you about the way you’re spending your time, and how directly you’re moving from where you are to where you want to go?

3. Your calendar

The email box conceals much of what saps our productivity. We see the secret energy drains that leave us staring blankly at the wall, or getting up and heading to the break room for coffee because we’re annoyed. The email box reminds us of why we’re using the meditation app we installed on our phone. The email box tells lots of stories that are buried beneath the surface of our days, because we’re the only person reading all that email. Our email box contains our secrets.

The calendar, on the other hand, is all surface. The events we schedule make our priorities incredibly obvious. There’s no need to search for meaning. It’s right there on the schedule. Your calendar is a less subtle way to find out where your time is going and what you’re prioritizing.

Big blocks of time disappear from our lives on a daily basis. Some of those blocks are productive, but some are the opposite. We’re looking to save five minutes a day, and the calendar likely shows how we use of huge chunks of time. There are opportunities galore in a scan of the calendar.

Sometimes finding the one percent on the calendar means removing something. But quite often, gaining the one percent means adding something like a daily call with your assistant or with your team.

Productivity isn’t always subtraction; sometimes, it’s the addition of rituals that drive productivity forward. A nightly ‘pre-planning tomorrow’ session is the secret sauce employed by some highly effective lawyers. Ten minutes of planning in the evening might save you half an hour of reacting the next day. It might be a quick way for you to secure another one percent gain.

Let your calendar be your guide to self-discovery. There are a bunch of one percent opportunities on those calendar pages.

4. Your spreadsheets

I recently had a conversation with a lawyer who explained that she manages her finances in an Excel spreadsheet. Why does she use Excel instead of something like Quickbooks or Xero?

Because it’s what she has always done.

Let’s think through the one percent opportunities here. First, she could switch to a bookkeeping product optimized to make the process efficient. Just the benefit of software built for the purpose gets her the one percent immediately. But, she might also use technology like Expensify to capture her credit card expenses, track her mileage, grab her Uber ride records, and integrate with her new bookkeeping software–that’s easily another one percent. Then she could outsource the entire undertaking to someone who specializes in this kind of simple accounting–another one percent (or more).

Take a look at the spreadsheets you’re keeping, and find more chances for the optimization of your time. Spreadsheets are awesome but they’re also a source of hidden automation opportunities.

Sometimes spreadsheets reveal the need to buy existing software. Sometimes they guide you to employ tools like Zapier to roll your own integrations and connect data between two sources. Spreadsheets often exist because we’ve simply decided it’s easier to ‘do it ourselves’ rather than find a better way. These seventy-two days are our chance to find that better way and double our productivity.

Look hard at that folder full of spreadsheets. There are plenty of one percent moves sitting right there in Excel and Google Sheets.

You’re skeptical but that doesn’t mean you can’t make big changes happen

You’re a lawyer, so you’re a skeptic. I get it; I’m a lawyer too.

And you’re right to be skeptical. It’s possible that you won’t find seventy-two small, daily productivity improvements you can implement quickly. Being skeptical serves you well as a lawyer.

But, being skeptical to the point of ignoring opportunities to level up is a mistake.

Sure, seventy-two in a row is tough. Let’s say you get halfway there and only find thirty-six. Is that so bad? Wouldn’t you like to recapture thirty-six times five minutes per day? Sure you would.

We work in a world where every five minutes matters. You’re already seeing the opportunities for improvement. Don’t let my optimism turn you into a pessimist. Take what I’m offering and use what you can. Even recovering a single daily five minute block of time makes a difference. That’s five minutes you can give to someone you love. Or, you can sell it to a client for $83.

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Turn it into a game and see what you can win.

Bring your universe into the search

I’m a big fan of gamifying everything. When I find a way to turn something into a game, for myself or for my team, it’s more fun. Optimizing productivity is interesting. Playing a game is fascinating.

Turn the search for the one percent improvements into a game. Let everybody play. That might mean engaging your spouse, who sees your unproductive behaviors and activities from a different perspective. It might mean bringing your team into the hunt to look at both your workday and their own. The burden of finding the one percent move each day doesn’t have to fall only upon your shoulders.

We’re not looking for the cure to cancer. We’re playing small ball here. We’re not trying to hit home runs; we’re not even trying to hit singles. We’re just trying to gain one percent. We’re like a pro player, looking for a way to run from home plate to first base about 1/20th of a second faster than yesterday. That’s all we’re seeking–tiny improvements happening every day for 72 days in a row.

Some of those one percent opportunities are already on your task list. You’ve just been waiting to find the right time. Some are in your mailbox, others are in your calendar, and still more are found in your spreadsheets. But there are even more. There are opportunities across your practice in the technology you already own, among the team members you currently manage, and in the marketing activities you already undertake.

Finding one percent per day, and accumulating those time savings over seventy-two days in a row, makes you twice as productive. Yep, it’s math, so it makes my brain hurt. But twice as productive means something to me–it means I get twice as much done, or work half as much, or earn twice as much as I do now. Telling me I can pick one of those three options, just seventy-two days from now, makes my brain hurt less. It makes me willing to think through the math, do the hunting for opportunities, and start planning how I’ll use the extra productivity I gain. It almost makes me like math. Isn’t it time to find your one percent?

ENDNOTE: Okay, I can hear the math people screaming at this point. There’s a reason I’m a lawyer and not a finance or software guy. My math is way wrong (but math sure does feel persuasive, right?). I took the Law School Admission test specifically because it didn’t involve math. Give me a break, okay? Just remember: productivity is a good thing, even when the numbers don’t add up. Getting more done in less time is better for you, me, and the rest of the world. Let’s not get lost in math. Stay focused on getting things done. Don’t let math get between you and results.