Productivity Stations:
Simplify Your Recurring Work with Centralized Systems

The 5 AM Miracle Podcast, hosted by Jeff Sanders

Episode #581: Productivity Stations: Simplify Your Recurring Work with Centralized Systems

Jeff Sanders
Years ago, I read the book "Effortless" by Greg McKeown.

And ever since, I have sought to bring that simple concept to life by asking one question over and over again.

How can I make this next action as effortless as possible?

This is The 5 AM Miracle, episode number 581: "Productivity Stations: Simplify Your Recurring Work with Centralized Systems."

Good morning and welcome to the 5 a.m. Miracle. I am Jeff Sanders and this is the podcast dedicated to dominating your day before breakfast. My goal is to help you bounce out of bed with enthusiasm, create powerful lifelong habits, and tackle your grandness goals with extraordinary energy. I am a keynote speaker and corporate trainer, specializing in delivering high energy, interactive, and action-oriented presentations and workshops focused on productivity, wellness, and personal.

and professional growth. If you want to learn more, head over to jeffsanders.com

slash speaking. Now, in the episode this week, I'll break down what a productivity

station actually is, why I love them so much, and how you can build your own

stations whenever and wherever you need them. Let's get to it.

I took a costuming class in college.

As a theater major, I was required to take a class in costuming, which taught me how to sew.

And in response, my mother bought me a sewing machine, and I've had the same sewing machine with me ever since.

Growing up, my mom had her sewing machine on a specific table in our basement, and it was always there.

Whenever she needed to sew something, she just sat down at her sewing table and sewed.

I don't have a table in my house set up for sewing because I really don't sew very often,

although based on how my daughters destroy their clothes, that could change very soon.

The efficiency angle is huge here.

If you have a predetermined location to do a recurring task and you have the resources you need already in place,

completing the task is as effortless as possible.

If not, as it is for me in regards to sewing, you would need to get out all

the materials each time the task came up, which inevitably waste time and makes

it more unlikely you will complete the task at all.

Easy tasks get done.

Hard tasks get ignored.

This week on this show, we're going to make your life easier.

So let's dig in.

This is productivity stations, how to simplify your recurring work with new centralized

systems.

Let's start with the concept of a productivity station and define

what I mean by that. A productivity station is a pre-built center, a centralized system,

a consolidated, pre-thought-through single location to accomplish a recurring task or set of

tasks. It is a group of materials that are organized together and are ready for

your next action. You already know what this is because you already have a lot of examples

in your life of what these could be, which I'll get to in just a second. But let's this

discuss the benefits of a centralized system, benefits of having all of your ducks in a row.

Ultimately, a great productivity station will reduce time to complete a task.

So imagine a checklist that's ready to go, or tools and materials already collected.

A location is predetermined.

Essentially, you reduce the time to do the action because everything you need is right there.

Secondly, you can reduce the time to switch to a new task.

So you can reduce the friction when task switching, which makes it easier to jump into the next action.

And honestly, in the world productivity, task switching is where a lot of time is lost, possibly most of it, because that's when distractions pop up the most, is you trying to delay doing the next thing.

Third benefit is a guaranteed end result.

So you can ensure you go through all the steps.

and complete the task successfully every single time.

And fourth, with a great productivity station,

you can prevent confusion about your next iterations.

So this guarantees the next time you do this same task,

you'll be ready for it and have all the materials you need in place.

So let's really make this productivity station concept come to life.

The first example that I listed was a sewing table,

essentially a centralized location, a predetermined location, where a single

activity is going to take place.

That is the core of this concept, and it can be duplicated across your entire life,

personally, professionally, at home, at the office, in your car.

Any location you go to on a recurring basis can be optimized.

And I would argue should be if your goal is a more efficient life to get the task done

faster and easier.

And then, if that's true, the amazing benefit of actually enjoying the

work that you do, which I think is the ultimate goal of a great productivity

system or a great productive lifestyle, is that you're able to move through things

in an effortless way that actually produces the opportunity for joy.

That's the end result that I want to see.

So all of this is not just about being more productive for the sake of productivity.

This is not about checking boxes.

It's not about making more money.

It's not about the typical things we associate with productivity.

It's not about output.

This is about your experience.

An effortless lifestyle improves your experience, which improves your joy,

which I think is the actual end result we're going for.

So a sewing table.

We'll start there again.

This is a centralized location to do a single activity,

which means the efficiency angle is already covered.

You walk up to the table, the things you need are right there.

Of course, you'll bring your clothing in a row as you're going to sew.

You sit down, you sew, it's done, you move on.

And the next time you want to sew, you sit back down at this location, do the work, get it done, and you move on.

If you can duplicate that example across your life, well, then you're not going to have what ultimately becomes the struggles, the difficulties, the difficulties, the

obstacles of where did I put that thing? Oh, my gosh, I have no idea what to do next.

Oh, this distraction popped up. All of the reasons why we don't get things done

will show up if you've not predetermined how you're going to do whatever the thing

is you're about to do next. You may not be a person who sews very often. I don't

so that often, but I'll give a good kind of secondary example to sewing itself.

though I don't have an actual single location or a table in place.

What I do have is my sewing machine and all the materials I need in a small box.

When I want to sew, I go to my garage where I have this box stored,

I pull it out, I put it onto my big table, my dining room,

I'll set it up, I'll do my sewing,

I put it all back in the box and put the box away.

In my mind, this is your second best opportunity.

If you don't have a permanent station set up,

your second best opportunity is a temporary station,

but that temporary station can be set up and optimized very quickly and easily.

So as we go through all these examples,

imagine one of those two scenarios.

Either A, it's a permanent location that's always there,

or B, it's the temporary mobile location that you could bring in with you,

set it up, do the thing, and move on.

Okay, sewing aside, let's move on to other examples.

Let's go with another kind of mobile example, which is a gym bag, a trail bag, or a travel bag, essentially, or a work bag will say, any bags you're going to have, they're going to carry with you to go somewhere and bring your materials on the go.

So a gym bag is a great example to begin with because if you go to the gym often or you go to the trail to run or you go to a location, your yoga studio, wherever it is, you're doing your workout.

there's a very good chance you need the same materials over and over again.

And if you pre-pack a bag with all the things you need for every single iteration, every single day, you go back again and again,

well, you've already solved all these problems.

Building the system up front will take time.

Deciding what you need for all these different bags will take time, but that time is well worth it.

Because then every single iteration, every single next action, every single recurring instance of the,

these activities will be faster, easier, and more fulfilling, more successful.

So in my life, I literally, in my office, in my home office here, I have a gym bag pre-packed,

I have a trail bag pre-packed, I have a travel suitcase pre-packed.

All of these things already have materials I need for the next iteration.

And you could go through your life and ask the question, do I have enough bags?

Do I have enough mobile materials set up for all these things?

I already know I'm going to do again and again.

It is such an incredible breath of fresh air to already have a bag packed,

to already have a checklist in place to remind you what goes in the bag to begin with.

These are great mobile examples because a lot of life has lived like this.

We'll use the car as another example.

Yes, a car is actually a permanent location for things,

but because the car itself is mobile, it kind of becomes a dual scenario here.

where you could pack the car with whatever you need,

and if you're on the go, you have what you need already there.

The trunk of my car actually has a first aid kit.

I've got backup glasses, backup materials for what I go to the gym or the trail of all kinds of stuff,

just in case, because in my life, the just in case scenarios happen often enough

it's necessary to have these things.

And it's extremely beneficial if in the moment you need something and it's there.

It's such an incredibly, not just productive solution, but a life-fulfilling solution to have what you need ready to go.

All right, the next example is one that I am personally really passionate about right now because I just made a massive transition in my diet.

yet again, I am returning back to my old ways. And one of the things that I did to improve my diet was to set up a smoothie station in the corner of my kitchen. Now, I've had my blender set up for a long time, literally 15 years in my kitchen. But what I never truly did was create what I'm now calling a smoothie station, which is a simple, single, very small space in my kitchen on the counter where all the materials that I need for making smoothies are all consistent.

consolidate it in one simple location. So I'll have my blender, my bananas,

supplements, a glass, a spoon, anything that I want to have to toss into these

smoothies, it's all right there in one place. Now, you may have the same thing in your

kitchen for making coffee or making tea or preparing meals in general. What I'm

talking about here are specific examples for recurring tasks, in this case, preparing

food on things you know you're going to do over and over again, but you just take

that one next step down the line of efficiency, of saying I am committing to this

process to such a degree that I want to guarantee that I have all the things I need

every single time. So this process is just as smooth as possible. A smoothie station

is as smooth as possible each and every time. The kicker to this one, the real trick

here is that if you commit to this and you create, let's say, a smoothie station,

a coffee corner, whatever the case is. The next time,

you want to make a smoothie, you've already pre-thought through this so your

hesitation to make one will fade. The friction that will exist to stop you from doing it

will have already been smoothed out. One of the biggest problems that we have with

productivity in general is that the starting process can have a lot of friction

or bottlenecks or obstacles. We don't want to start something because we think there's a lot

have worked to get it going. Well, if you've pre-built a station with all the things

you need, that problem is gone. So the convenience, the effortless convenience of just

slipping into that action is so easy, you're not going to skip it. And if you make

the starting process as easy as possible, you are significantly more likely to do

that action over and over again. And this is the most important concept this entire

episode. Take the things you want to guarantee you do, your daily habits, your weekly

It's your recurring actions that compound over time to make you healthier,

more productive.

Those are the actions we want to make as effortless as possible.

So in my life, if I want to be healthy, which I do, and I want to prioritize making

smoothies, which I do, well, then I need to take the time to build out the smoothie

station to guarantee that every single day making a smoothie is the easiest thing

I could possibly do.

Now, I've also gone on to apply this exact same strategy to making salads as well.

Salads are a little more complicated for me because I've got a lot more materials I could use,

a lot more ingredients in the refrigerator, and on my counter that I want to toss into my nightly salads.

This is also a new thing for me to guarantee that I have a salad every single day.

And if I want that to be true, if that's my goal, that I have to make it easy,

which means not only having a corner setup or a location set up with all those materials,

but this also goes a little farther.

You could also have reminders in your task manager and on your calendar

to guarantee you're going to buy the ingredients to know what they are, where you buy them,

how much they cost, how often you go back again and again to get more of them.

This can be a pretty comprehensive and far-reaching scenario, but this is asking the bigger question,

how could I guarantee success for this action?

And to truly answer that question, you have to go through.

all of these different variables and perspectives to guarantee the end result.

So the salad is a great one because in order to make a salad, I need fresh produce.

Well, I don't grow my own food, so I have to go buy it.

And if I do so, it has to be fresh because salad goes bad very quickly.

You're talking 48 hours, maybe less, which means to guarantee a salad every single day,

I have to go buy new produce every couple of days at the very least.

So now in my calendar and in my life, I am making frequent trips to go get the materials I need.

And then when I get back home, I have what I need set up to prepare the materials, make the food, consume it effortlessly, and make that a guaranteed part of my lifestyle.

The bigger picture question here has to do with your values.

What do you want to make sure is true about your life every day?

And if there are things you care about, your health, your wealth, your career, your family, what are the things you need to have be true for those long-term bigger picture values to be true?

The practical nuts and bolts here run the show.

The daily habits are the thing that define your future success.

If there's anything about your life you could fix, it is your habits.

Because that is the one factor that will guarantee whether you get the thing you want or not.

everything can be a habit, and every habit can and should be optimized if the end result matters to you.

Whether it's a smoothie station, a salad station, a coffee corner, a productive work example, all of these things add up.

But they're all based on habits, and they're all based on these stations to guarantee those habits can actually be executed on every single time.

Okay, I've made that point fairly clear.

Let's move on now to the efficiency angle of your productivity in the office or your home office.

One thing I did during the pandemic was rebuild my podcast studio.

I wanted new gear.

I wanted higher quality pro gear.

I wanted to learn how to use it and really up my game with podcasting.

And so when I bought all this gear and had to learn how to use it, that was a lot of time invested.

But not only did I want to improve the audio quality of the show and my ability to produce the show in a much bigger

grander scale. I had a personal challenge, which was to make recording the show

as effortless as possible, and that included one specific angle. I wanted to be able to

walk into my home office, where my podcast studio is, where I am now, and turn on all

the gear and start recording as quickly as possible. In other words, don't build a system

that's so confusing or difficult that it takes me 25 minutes or an hour or whatever

to set the whole thing up to start.

I needed the efficiency angle to be true to begin the activity,

or else I would basically guarantee I wouldn't do it,

or make it so difficult I would hate doing it.

In order to love the activity, once again,

the starting line has to be effortless.

And so I built out a system where I could walk into my office

and start recording in under one minute.

That took a lot of effort to figure out.

It took me a long time to get all the day.

ducks in a row, but once I did, I literally could walk in and begin recording

so fast, it's less than a minute later.

If that can be true for all of your productivity stations, you're so much

more likely to do the task at hand.

And if the quality bar can also be there, it's a double win, right?

Quality and speed matter here because the whole goal is to make sure you don't

have the excuse not to do it, right?

Make it easy, make it awesome.

Now, another place in my house I optimized a long time ago, probably before I even had kids, was my garage and my workshop for woodworking.

I got really into woodworking a long time ago, and it's the kind of personal hobby that I love.

But in order for me to spend more time with woodworking, I needed a centralized place to do all that work.

And my garage is a great place for it.

And I actually built out a workbench, and I have all of my tools surrounded around this workbench.

So if I want to get stuff done, if I want to build a new chair or something,

I can just go to my workbench, all the materials I need are in my workshop,

and I can just do the thing.

And it's amazing not only how many more tools I keep buying,

but also the fact that I keep organizing this space better and better over time

to guarantee the ease of access to the tools that I need.

One of the things you'll notice if you really get into something,

and it's a great example here is woodworking because you could buy an endless number,

of tools and gadgets and materials.

But the more things you own, the more you have to organize them,

or else you're going to drown in your own stuff.

And if you drown in your own systems,

it's going to be too messy to want to engage.

And so once again, you are building a bottleneck

that's going to prevent you from doing the task at all.

And of course, with a personal hobby,

it's not required to ever do.

But if I want to spend time in it,

I have to still make it effortless to begin.

But you see the thing.

here. Every single one of these stations is about making the starting line simple.

And so now my workshop between tasks, I'm actually between projects right now,

my workshop is very clean and organized. Now that to me is actually a problem.

I love it when it's messy because that generally means I'm in the middle of something,

right? A messy middle is acceptable. A mess between projects is not. This is a guideline

I've used for a long time. It basically argues that if you have

finished a project and you're not yet starting the next one, that's when you do

cleanup. That's when all the tools are put away. Everything is organized,

labeled, consolidated. You throw away the things you don't need anymore and you

make it ready for the next iteration. But then when the next project starts and

you're doing all your thing and you're creative and all the stuff is out everywhere,

it's okay to have a mess while you're working. But between projects, it's not.

Keep that in mind as you build out your stations and do your work, that that back and forth of having a mess during the project and then a cleanup afterwards will keep you in this really nice rhythm of optimization and efficiency and productivity over time.

And frankly, it's actually a lot of fun to really optimize your space.

I always get new ideas and how to do things better.

And it's such an opportunity to build a better system for your next action, next project, next woodworking hobby activity.

Now, shifting gears just slightly, another great example for a productivity station in your personal life at home could be areas for your kids.

So I asked my wife, Tessa, for ideas for the episode this week if she had her own ideas for a productivity station.

station, and one of the first things she mentioned was that she really liked the

idea that our daughters could have a quiet area to do their homework.

Our oldest daughter is in first grade.

She now has homework, and so we, on a temporary mobile scenario, will set up an

area at a table for her to do her homework.

Right now it's not permanent.

As she gets older, we will find a more permanent solution for her.

This is actually a good example of how these things can play out.

As you begin to toy with a new area, to test a concept, you can begin in a mobile scenario,

and then if it's going to stick around for a long time, make it permanent.

So right now, a homework area for us is mobile.

It is temporary.

It's used occasionally, but not all the time.

But it will be permanent down the road.

Another good example of this for a kids' areas.

Our youngest daughter is in a Montessori school, and the Montessori model for daycare and for kids to grow and learn is

They have what they call work.

And work represents these kind of pre-bundled activities for the kids to engage in on their own autonomous way.

And they'll go and get their work and they'll bring it usually on a tray or in a small box.

And they'll pull it out.

They'll do the activity.

And then they clean it all up and they put it back in the cubby or on the shelf.

This is exactly what I'm talking about with this entire concept.

The sewing machine that I have that's in a box in my garage is an example of this kind of work.

It's a preset, organized activity.

Everything's bundled together.

I pull it out.

I do the activity and I put it back.

So my three-year-old has learned how to do this in her daycare.

My oldest daughter also did that before and she's now applying it at a higher level.

But all of these things play out, regardless of your age, regardless of your activity, all of it can be applied in ways that's more organized, more efficient, and results in you having what you need, when you need it, where you need it.

And I find this concept to be so encouraging for future activities, whether you're

working on a financial project, a business goal, a personal fitness goal, all of

it applies here.

A pre-built station can, in essence, guarantee success.

It guarantees that if you sit down at that station with the materials, you can all

but guarantee the end results for what you're going for.

And that is extremely encouraging, especially in areas of your life, where you're

struggling or there's a weakness or you feel stress about something.

What if you could find a way to tackle that stress directly and then feel that

sense of joy that I was referring to?

Converting stress into joy is one of my biggest life themes right now and I see

opportunities for that everywhere.

So if I identify, here's a stressor.

Well, could I apply a productivity station to it and then make it effortless and then find

joy? That seems like a great idea, and it works every single time. It's such a

powerful concept to apply over and over again. Another example I forgot to mention earlier

is a reading nook or a den. One of the things I love a personal growth is being able

to sit down and really dig through a good book, usually a nonfiction how-to book,

and when I do that, I have this little corner on my couch, my living room that I sit at

with this nice little end table and a lamp. It's a very simple small space where I

have what I need to read. There's a notebook, a pen, a highlighter, the book that I'm

working through. That's it. It's a very simple small station where I can sit down,

have my personal growth time, read, take some notes, and move on. And the more

efficient and pre-determined that is, the more likely I am to actually sit down and read.

And yes, read a physical book, an old school book with paper, right?

Like, it still exists.

And these things are incredible.

A little station, a little nook to sit down and do the work is such a powerful concept.

Once again, this can be applied across the board to almost anything.

Now, this is a bigger concept at play that I have not yet discussed that I think deserve some attention here.

If you read my book, The 5am Miracle, and yes, there's a book from this podcast, or heard

my podcast episodes for many years ago about a concept that I call equilibrium

zero.

You're going to find this very interesting.

So equilibrium zero is my umbrella term for getting to zero.

If you know the concept of inbox zero with your email, you know what it means

to get to zero.

It means you process everything that came in to an inbox.

You could process all your physical mail in your mailbox, your digital email,

in your email inbox.

You process all the messy things on your desk.

or messy things in your home or office.

Getting to zero literally means cleaning up.

You process everything, you put it where it belongs,

and you get to that nice zeroed out homeostasis.

That's the concept, and it works over and over again.

One of the key things about clutter

that I find to be more distracting than anything

is that clutter is a simple concept of leaving things out

that really should be put away.

So when you get to zero, not every single item disappears.

Some stuff is left out.

Some things are permanently in a location where you need to access them again.

So the struggle, the tension here is between what I'm talking about of getting to zero or putting things away versus things you're using on a permanent basis versus things that are clutter and should be put somewhere else.

All of these are subjective decisions for you to decide.

what things deserve a permanent outward location where it's always visible,

always accessible. A good example of this might be my keyboard and trackpad

that I have in my home office. I don't put my keyboard away for my computer

when I'm done with it. It stays out on the desk 24-7 because I'm going to need it

again and again and again. So its permanent location is out and visible. So in my

mind, it's not clutter. It's not a thing to put away. It's already done.

but you have to decide for yourself if that's true for you or not,

how many things deserve to be out all the time versus it's clutter,

go organize it, and get rid of it.

When you build out a productivity station,

you are deciding in advance what things are out,

what things are not,

what things you're going to do over and over again,

versus what things are accessible but still organized somewhere else.

This is all your decision to make on what qualifies as what,

But knowing the answer and deciding ahead of time intentionally what that is can guarantee a level of organization and simplicity you've probably never experienced before.

It's an incredible thing to be that intentional with every single item you encounter in your home, in your office, in your car, literally everywhere.

You can decide what is clutter, what is not.

What is productive?

What's distracting?

What is zeroed out versus what is a big hot mess?

mess to clean up. This is the work to do as a productivity person, making these choices

every single day and being willing to do the work to put it all away.

If you were to ask me what the biggest shift was that I made when I became a parent

and had kids, the honest answer, the daily answer to that question is the amount

of time that I spend cleaning and organizing. It is unbelievable how much time I spend

doing laundry, doing dishes, putting away toys, finding messes, cleaning them up.

It's literally all I do at home.

My weekends is Jeff Sanders cleaning and organizing over and over and over again.

I didn't see that coming.

I did not predict that that would be my life.

But because I value this zero concept so much, because I know the value in organization and cleanliness, I am personally opting in to doing that.

that much. Cleaning, organizing, laundry, dishes, toys, all of it is going to be

processed by me all day, every day. Because if I don't, and I've seen this play out,

if I don't opt into that, the amount of clutter will increase, the amount of stress

will increase, the amount of work that I get done will decrease, my joy will decrease.

You see how this plays out. If you do the work, you get the result, you don't do the work,

you get the consequence of not doing it. That's what this concept is arguing.

It's a thesis of mine that if you do this, you'll get it. Obviously, how it plays out in your life is up to you.

But my argument, my perspective on this is that the effort it takes to build the stations, build the systems, commit to the work, get to zero is 100% worth the time and energy.

Because the opposite is just terrible.

Not doing it is so painful that I cannot opt into that or return to that because I've been there before.

Having said all of this, I would love to hear from you for what your productivity stations look like.

What parts of your life have you organized and made into a centralized system?

Ones that I maybe have missed in the episode this week.

Examples that are really effective for you.

I would love to hear that because I want to discuss those here on the show and dig a lot more.

into this concept because I see so much potential for these stations and then being

a central role in your life, in your work, personal life, professional life,

it's all there because these stations are just that good.

And for the action step this week.

Of course, go build your own productivity station for one of your recurring

PIC a task you complete over and over again, but make it a lot easier for your next iteration.

It could be sewing, laundry, responding to email, recording a podcast, reading a book,

going to sleep, or any number of activities in your life and work.

Pick one, systematize it, and make your next action as effortless as possible.

Of course, subscribe to this podcast in your favorite podcast app, or become a VIP member of the 5A Miracle

community by going to 5am miracle premium.com for all of the ad-free episodes,

bonuses, and more.

That's all I've got for you here on the 5 a.m. Miracle podcast this week.

Until next time, you have the power to change your life, and all that fun begins bright and early.

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