As 2025 begins and my 11-month-old proudly takes his first steps, I’ve been reflecting on my own strides forward. Last year wasn’t easy—balancing less sleep than ever, a new job, and diving into the world of AI. But somehow, amidst all the chaos, it turned out to be my most productive (and rewarding) year yet.
1. Almost 20 Years of Productivity Obsession
I didn’t start out productive—my early career strategy was to work longer hours, often 12–14 hour days, thinking that grinding harder was the answer. Over almost 20 years, I’ve learned to spot productivity sinkholes—email pings, distractions, and confusing 'response speed' with effectiveness. Now, I finish my week knowing I’ve made tangible progress, not just answered 1500 emails.
Over time, I’ve tested countless tools and techniques—bullet journaling, Pomodoro timers, focus apps, and meditation. These experiments have occasionally led to some truly odd behavior. Take listening to emails in the shower, for example—a strange mix of multitasking and madness—or turning AI training into a personal fitness regime, complete with 10 press-ups every time a prompt failed. But, being open to experimenting taught me what works and what does not.
I’ve also studied how deep work rewires the brain, how it takes 23 minutes to refocus after interruptions, and why juggling too many tasks is a recipe for chaos. These lessons, along with a willingness to embrace the absurd, helped lay the groundwork for the breakthroughs of 2024.
My productivity obsessed desk set up
2. The AI Advantage: From Assistant to Partner
If 2024 had a professional headline, it would be this: the year I became a power user of AI. Tools like ChatGPT became more than just handy shortcuts; they evolved into essential collaborators. For non-sensitive tasks, I used ChatGPT as a junior team member—writing emails, brainstorming solutions, and reviewing my work. It’s not perfect (far from it), but it’s fast, reliable, and always ready to refine my ideas.
For sensitive projects, our internal AI playground summarized 150 client documents in days instead of weeks. By cutting through cognitive overload, it let me focus on decisions, not data wrangling. Whilst for cognitive encoding (aka memory) I still need to read key documents meticulously and make notes, AI’s distillations have been game-changing for speed and accuracy.
3. Time is Finite: Know Your Capacity
Using Motion.AI taught me to map my time and capacity effectively. Scheduling tasks like 'do exercise' revealed my priorities—but also my limits. Despite my best efforts, some tasks (like actually using my garage gym) fell through the cracks, while others, like creating AI podcasts to summarize disease reports, showed me how far we have come in the AI revolution of our working lives.
For the first time, I could say with complete confidence, “I can’t take that on right now—the next slot I have is two weeks from Tuesday.” That clarity doesn't just help me manage my workload; it helps me say no without guilt. It’s not about doing everything—it’s about doing what actually matters and resisting the urge to crown yourself ‘Inbox Zero Champion of the World.’
4. Parenting as the Ultimate Productivity Test
If you’ve ever had a baby, you know that sleep deprivation and unpredictability don’t exactly make for a productivity-friendly environment. And yet, raising Theo has been my most rewarding challenge. It’s forced me to redefine what it means to be truly present—both at work and at home. Of course, working from home comes with its own set of challenges, like trying to focus while running on four hours of sleep and hearing Theo screaming from his room next door.
This past year, I rarely missed a bedtime, keeping nightly rituals like reading Theo stories with his mum or enjoying the chaos of bath-time sacred. To make it work, I've become ruthlessly efficient during work hours, minimizing distractions and maximizing presence.
Parenting has taught me that productivity isn’t just about output; it’s about balancing priorities. Of course, there were many failures—like forgetting to leave the house for a week or relying too heavily on a task manager that doesn’t account for sleep-deprived brain fog and forgetting to even add the task to the clever AI manager in the first place. But the incentive of winding down with bedtime cuddles, laughing together during bath-time adventures, or saying goodnight to Harold the giraffe - makes getting shit done - much easier.
Harold the Giraffe
5. A Whole New Skillset: Building AI-Powered Tools
Using AI is one thing. Training it? That’s another challenge entirely. In 2024, I threw myself into developing AI-powered tools for our agency—a process that demanded a steep learning curve and a new way of thinking about innovation.
Training a large language model to grasp behavioral science revealed just how tricky it is to explain nuanced human decision-making. At one point, I spent an embarrassing number of hours debating with GPT over whether 'loss aversion' was a subtle insight (spoiler: it wasn’t). Despite the absurdity it was one of the most rewarding challenges of 2024.
Closing Thought: Becoming More Effective, Against All Odds
Looking back, 2024 wasn’t just about ticking boxes or doing more—it was about surviving, thriving, and occasionally losing arguments to a chatbot (and my son). Comparing today’s me to the Harry of 10 years ago, I’d say I’m 4-5x more effective, and not just because I’ve learned how to juggle sleep deprivation with innovation. Somehow, instead of melting under the weight of sleepless nights, AI debates, and a new job, I came out mentally stronger (physically weaker - except for the ability to hold a 12kg on one arm for hours at a time!). Like Theo’s first steps, it was a little wobbly at times, but every stumble made the journey that much more rewarding.
Bring on 2025.