The Entrepreneur Tackles his Digital Efficiency
Although he’s only been in the city for a few months, Xander is already the archetypal multitasking New Yorker. Aside from his work in venture capital, he’s launching a new professional sports league for olympic wrestling. Needless to say, he’s busy - all the more reason to look closely at his digital life so he could run on all cylinders.
You’re already a huge “efficiency junkie,” as you call yourself. What were your hopes and expectations when it came to digital efficiency?
Most people, myself included, think of themselves as "being productive” when they're crossing tasks off their lists. In reality, that exercise is largely meaningless if not accompanied by a process that ensures the accomplishment of real goals via focus on the right tasks.
In short, it’s more important to construct and examine a productivity system than it is to stay busy. If we often don’t distribute our time and mental energy accordingly, we lose sight of that.
I was really looking forward to walking through my process to see how I could use my digital tools in a way that would allow me to better utilize my time and take on my goals with more clarity.
During our session you talked a bit about how you break your day into 3 parts: your morning routine, your “day job” time, and your evening routine. How did our tweaks affect your workflow?
Yes, this was huge for me. I’m a firm believer (especially after reading “The Power of Habit”) that willpower is finite. I was spending far too much of my morning, aka when I have the most willpower, planning for non-priority personal tasks.
The Astro Lab helped me construct a system that got me right to business in the morning, allowing me to tackle my secondary tasks in the evening. We fragmented ideas into two different task managers, allowing me to “hide” my personal tasks until I decided to tackle them in the evening. We also set up a recurring alarm in my evenings reminding me to look over the personal tasks so they weren’t neglected entirely.
Since then, I’ve felt like I’ve been able to shorten my organizational morning routine, crush my mornings at work, and also pursue my other endeavors without the fear that I’d forget to set aside time for them.
Finally, can you give us a little sneak peak into what’s next for PROWL?
I can’t say much - but I will say that we are about to do something unprecedented in the history of sports. No olympic sport has ever done what we’re about to do!
