Oct 5, 2021 9 min read Supersystems

2 simple productivity tricks to significantly improve your life

Productivity has become such a big genre. Everyone has their own tips and tricks to get productive. The moment someone starts sharing their tricks, we're all ears.

But most productivity tricks are somewhat complex, or hacky. Probably, that's what makes them interesting to us. We're always looking for that one interesting hack that'll make us a productivity ninja.

In today's blog, we've no such "interesting" or "hacky" tricks for you. Instead, we've got 2 really simple things that if you practice will not just increase your productivity levels, but also the quality of your life.

Charlie Friedman, founder of Nashville Classical school, shares these 2 amazingly simple, yet effective productivity enhancers with us. Let's hear it from him-

"Number one, the stuff you eat really matters in how you feel and what are your energy levels throughout the day. I don't eat a lot of sugar, and I don't eat white bread and things like that. I feel a whole lot better if I just drink water and eat healthy food. A lot of people don't care about their food and put anything and everything in their body, but they don't realize that what you eat determines your energy for the day. So it's really very important.

Second thing is you gotta move. I don't do anything fancy. But just 15 minutes of home workout does a world of good for me. Just some pushups and air squats makes a big difference than someone who doesn't move their body at all. Getting some sort of movement keeps you in shape while keeping you energized.

Both these are fairly simple and obvious. Yet majority people don't do them and it impacts their productivity levels and overall well being."

That makes a lot of sense. Often in pursuit of something interesting and complex, we forget the simple yet effective. Charlie's tricks remind us of the latter.

In this episode, Charlie Friedman, founder of Nashville Classical school, shares how he got to starting his own school, how's it different from other schools, how they tackled Covid-19 as a school. He also shares a typical day in his life, 2 simple productivity tricks that anyone can benefit from, and how he'd spend an extra hour in his day if he magically got one.

Charlie introduces himself

Hi, I'm Charlie Friedman, founder and head of school at Nashville Classical. A free, public elementary and middle school located in East Nashville.

Our school opened in 2013 with one grade, kindergarten, and about 89 students. We've added a new grade every year since then, so today we've got 502 students in grades K to 7. We also have plans to open 2 more campuses, which will get us to 2000 students. Which is something I'm very excited about.

I get to wake up everyday and greet the 500 children who come to our building, 56 staff members that work for us, and lead them to our mission.

The beginnings

Right out of college, I became a public school teacher in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I taught in an urban public school. When I got to this school, I found that while they're all wonderful people working there, but the big school system is very unorganized, chaotic and bureaucratic.

The best example I can give you of that is my 1st day at school. I showed up on the 1st day and told them I was there to teach. But the woman in the office looked at a piece of paper and said, "I don't have a record for you to be here, your name's not on the list, so you can't get in".

The kids will only start coming to school 3 days after, so I hung out in the office. I even heard them say that we don't have a 7th grade reading teacher, which is what I taught, but they still didn't let me in.

I came in the 2nd day and again they tell me the same story. "Your name's not on the list". While I could clearly see that there wasn't a 7th grade reading teacher. I knew there was a problem.

Then eventually the day comes when the kids come to school, and probably 30 minutes after the students have come in, the principal came to me and said, "you've to go to room 307". That's when I finally got in.

Since then, I've worked with amazing colleagues, students and parents who really cared about their kids. But there was so much bureaucracy, and it was always unclear who made decisions and how they made them. I worked in the system for 5 years, and the whole time I thought I could do this better. My thoughts went like, "if I were the incharge, I would do this" on loop.

Eventually I found a National Training Program, that's called "Building Excellent Schools". They did exactly what I wanted. They took people who thought, "if I were the incharge, I would do it this way" and say "Would you like to be incharge?". So they gave me a year long fellowship where I had the chance to work in a community and did the research and design to build a school.

For that 1 year, I met a lot of parents and families, at all sorts of places, talking to them about their dreams for their kids and I would tell them about the promise of our school. Between their dreams and our promise, we managed to get the school open.

What's different about Nashville Classic?

When I started my school, I made sure to not do the things that I found wrong or chaotic at the schools I worked at. Almost everything is different about our school.

A lot of this difference is brought about by hiring the right kind of people. Those who are talented, hungry and smart. Then you give them clear roles and responsibilities. Build systems for them to get feedback, so they can improve.

Whenever we hire someone, we onboard them well. Telling them about the culture and how things work here. That really sets the right tone. They also start getting feedback on their work right from the 1st day, that makes them used to it and they progressively get better at their work.

That I believe fundamentally sets us apart from the other schools.

What it's like studying at Nashville Classical?

If you're a student at our school. Here's what your day at our school will look like. So your parents come to drop you off to school, let's say it's raining, there will be a teacher in front of school waiting for you holding an umbrella. A teacher will always be there to welcome you in, regardless of the rain.

Once you get in, you'll be greeted by myself, or our Principal with a handshake. Then you're told to follow a red/blue/green/yellow line on the tiles, which is going to lead you straight into your classroom. In your classroom, your desk will have your nametag on it. On your desk there will be independent reading books, there'll be a pencil pouch, that already has a fresh pack of crayons, a glue stick, scissors and everything you'll need. It's a world class experience.

You'll know that this is a place where expectations to perform will be high and so is the support, even before a teacher comes in and starts off your day.

First day of a teacher at Nashville Classical

We talked about how a typical day at Naschville Classical looks like for a student. Now let's talk about the 1st day of a teacher.

Once the teacher walks in, they'll find a gift bag waiting on their desk. That gift bag will contain a Naschville Classical T-shirt, our water bottle and a binder. In that binder, there'll be our employee policy manual, benefits manual, student procedures manual. You'll also get all the tech gadgets you'll need.

Then you walk into our auditorium. There'll be an assigned seat for you, with your name on it. There'll be your breakfast, which is for the 1st day of training and staff development. We can't offer breakfast everyday, but we do on their 1st day. That's what the onboarding day looks like.

Besides, every morning at around 7:17 all the teachers come together in the hallway for a standup meeting. I know these processes are common for tech organizations and a lot of businesses. But it's not a common practice in schools.

In this standup, we just update everyone on any important updates. Say there's a fire drill happening at 9:30, we'll inform the teachers in the standup so they're prepared for it. The standup just helps keep everyone on the same page.

Tackling Covid-19 as a school

On 6 or 7th March, the Mayor of Nashville declared that all public schools will remain closed for next 2 weeks. We thought 2 weeks isn't a long time, we'll be back soon. But that didn't turn out to be true as everyone knows.

Here are 3 things we did for tackling Covid-19:

Took care of our people- our students, teachers and families of everyone. We assigned 5 families to every teacher to help them with all they need.
Use of technology- we realized that technology will play a big part in getting us through this. We held driveaways (just like a Burger King driveaway) for parents to take Chromebooks and books that their kid can use to study from home.
Focusing on what matters- we were not clear when the schools will be allowed to open up and we didn't even know if these days will be considered as holidays or will it school from home. So we just focused on what matters and that's learning. Every kid had to submit 1 English assignment, 1 Math assignment, and 1 Social Studies assignment everyday. We tracked all of it in sheets. To track the engagement on these assignments.

We thought we'll only need to do this for a few weeks or months, but we ended up operating like this for an entire year. We're back open now, with 52% students coming to school, and 48% students learning from home. (This might have changed now as the episode was recorded in April 2021)

A typical day

I've got a 15 month old child, so I've to think about time pretty carefully. I wake up early, at around 5:15. Then I do 3 things as soon as I wake up. I get coffee started, empty the dishwasher from the night before and then I'll set up my son's breakfast. Then I'll do 15 minutes of exercise at home.

Then from about 5:40 to 6:20, I try to get 30 minutes of uninterrupted work. At 6:30, I get dressed, take my dog for a walk. Then I'll spend 5 minutes with my son, and then I'll change his diaper. Then I'm off to work.

I get to work by around 7:15, I actually live only 5 mins away from school. Then we do our 7:17 standup. Then from 7:20 to 7:40, I'll just walk around the building and say 'hi' to staff. From 7:40 to 8:00 is our family arrival, so I'm shaking hands with students.

After that I've meetings lined up with my direct reports. While I'm in these meetings, I still get some work done on the side, or we'll take a walk to a classroom while talking.

Everyday I try to visit at least 3 classrooms and then I'll write a short feedback emails to the teachers on what could they improve on.

School ends at 2:40. After that, from 3 to 5 in the afternoon, I usually don't take any meetings. During that time I'll just check my emails, get another burst of focused work, and make some plans for the next day.

2 simple tricks to increase productivity

Number one, the stuff you eat really matters in how you feel and what are your energy levels throughout the day. I don't eat a lot of sugar, and I don't eat white bread and things like that. I feel a whole lot better if I just drink water and eat healthy food. A lot of people don't care about their food and put anything and everything in their body, but they don't realize that what you eat determines your energy for the day. So it's really very important.

Both these are fairly simple and obvious. Yet majority people don't do them and it impacts their productivity levels and overall well being.

One extra hour

If I get one extra hour in my day, I'd probably give it to someone who needs it more than me as I'm fairly happy with the number of hours I have. Besides, if I have to use it myself, I'd probably cook a nice meal as I love cooking.