Productivity

Productivity

Umbrella skill for personal and team productivity: task decomposition, daily/weekly planning, meeting optimization, status updates, goal setting, and focus management. Each mode loads its own reference files on demand.

Mode Detection

Classify into one mode before proceeding.

If the request spans modes, pick the primary mode and note the secondary.

Workflow by Mode

TASK Mode

Load: references/task-management.md, references/llm-productivity-failure-modes.md

1. Capture — Accept tasks in any format: freeform text, bullet lists, pasted meeting notes, vague intentions. Extract actionable items.

2. Decompose — Apply vertical slicing (because horizontal slices create work that cannot ship independently):

   Slice Quality	Example
   Good (vertical)	"User can upload a CSV and see a preview" — shippable alone
   Weak (horizontal)	"Build the upload API" — requires the UI to deliver value

3. Estimate — Assign time estimates using the 1/2/4-hour bucketing system (because finer granularity creates false precision, coarser loses planning value). Tasks over 4 hours need decomposition.

4. Prioritize — Apply the appropriate framework based on context:

   Context	Framework	Why
   Personal daily work	Eisenhower (urgent/important)	Fast, intuitive, separates reactive from proactive
   Backlog with many items	ICE (Impact/Confidence/Ease)	Quantitative ranking without heavy data requirements
   Team sprint planning	Weighted scoring against goals	Defensible, transparent to stakeholders

5. Organize — Group by context (because context-switching between unrelated tasks costs 15-25 minutes per switch). Batch similar work: all emails together, all code reviews together, all writing together.

Gate: Every task has an action verb, a completion condition, and a time estimate. Vague items like "think about marketing" get reframed as "Draft 3 marketing channel options with pros/cons (2h)."

PLAN Mode

Load: references/daily-weekly-planning.md, references/llm-productivity-failure-modes.md

1. Gather constraints — Ask for (conversationally, not as a wall of questions):

   • Calendar commitments for the day/week
   • Hard deadlines
   • Energy level and known energy patterns (because matching task difficulty to energy state increases completion rates)
   • Carryover from yesterday

2. Select top priorities — Identify the Top 3 outcomes for the day (because more than 3 priorities means zero priorities). Apply the "if only these 3 things got done, would today feel successful?" test.

3. Build time blocks — Map tasks to calendar slots:

   Block Type	When to Schedule	Duration
   Deep work (creation, analysis)	Peak energy hours (usually morning)	90-120 min
   Reactive work (email, Slack, reviews)	Low energy hours (usually post-lunch)	30-60 min batches
   Admin/maintenance	End of day	30 min
   Buffer	Between blocks	15 min minimum

4. Identify conflicts — Flag when calendar meetings fragment deep work blocks. Surface the cost: "You have 3 meetings between 9-12, leaving zero uninterrupted blocks during your peak hours."

5. Generate plan — Output a concrete, time-blocked plan with the Top 3 outcomes highlighted.

Gate: Plan accounts for actual calendar (not aspirational free time). Deep work blocks are at least 90 minutes. Buffers exist between blocks. Total planned work does not exceed available hours minus 20% (because unplanned work always appears).

MEETING Mode

Load: references/meeting-optimization.md, references/llm-productivity-failure-modes.md

1. Determine operation:

   Operation	What to Do
   Audit existing meeting	Apply the 5P framework: Purpose, Participants, Preparation, Process, Payoff
   Design new agenda	Build outcome-driven agenda with time allocations and decision types
   Convert to async	Draft async alternative with decision framework and deadline
   Optimize recurring meeting	Analyze frequency, attendance, decision output vs time spent

2. For audits — Calculate meeting cost (participants x hourly rate x duration x frequency). Surface the number because most people underestimate it. A weekly 1-hour meeting with 8 people at $75/hr costs $31,200/year.

3. For agendas — Every agenda item gets:

   • Type: Decision, Discussion, Information, or Brainstorm (because different types need different facilitation)
   • Owner: Who presents/facilitates this item
   • Time: Allocated minutes
   • Pre-read: What participants should review before the meeting
   • Outcome: What "done" looks like for this item

4. For async conversion — Apply the async-first decision tree:

   • Can this be a document with comments? Do that instead.
   • Does this need real-time debate? Keep the meeting, shorten it.
   • Does this need a decision from one person? Send them a 1-page memo with a deadline.

Gate: Every meeting has a stated purpose that could not be achieved async. Every agenda item has a type, owner, time allocation, and defined outcome. Information-only meetings are flagged for conversion to async.

STATUS Mode

Load: references/status-updates.md, references/llm-productivity-failure-modes.md

1. Detect audience — Different audiences need different framing:

   Audience	Frame	Length	Lead With
   Manager (1:1)	Progress + blockers + asks	3-5 bullets	What you need from them
   Team (standup)	Yesterday/Today/Blockers	60 seconds spoken	Blockers first
   Stakeholders	Outcomes + timeline + risks	1 page	Business impact
   Executives	Red/Yellow/Green + decisions needed	< 200 words	Decisions needed

2. Gather inputs — Ask for:

   • What shipped or progressed since last update
   • What is blocked and by whom
   • What decisions are needed (and from whom)
   • Timeline changes (and why)

3. Generate update using the Progress/Plans/Problems format:

   • Progress: Completed outcomes (not activities). "Shipped search indexing, 40% faster queries" beats "worked on search."
   • Plans: Next period's commitments with confidence levels.
   • Problems: Blockers with specific asks. "Need API access from Platform team by Friday to unblock integration testing" beats "waiting on dependencies."

4. For standups — Optimize for brevity:

   • Lead with blockers (because that is the only part the team can act on in real time)
   • State completed items as outcomes, not activities
   • State today's focus as the single most important deliverable

Gate: Status update exists. Outcomes framed as results (not activities). Every problem has a specific ask with a named owner and deadline. Executive updates are under 200 words.

REVIEW Mode

Load: references/daily-weekly-planning.md, references/llm-productivity-failure-modes.md

1. Collect — Gather data from the period:

   • What was planned vs what actually happened
   • Tasks completed, deferred, or abandoned
   • Unplanned work that appeared
   • Calendar analysis: time in meetings vs deep work vs reactive work

2. Process — For each incomplete item:

   Outcome	Action
   Deferred (still relevant)	Reschedule with honest time estimate
   Deferred (no longer relevant)	Remove — carrying dead tasks creates cognitive overhead
   Blocked	Identify the specific unblock action and owner
   Abandoned (scope changed)	Archive with reason

3. Reflect — Surface patterns (because reviews that skip reflection are just task lists):

   • What type of work consistently gets deferred? (This reveals priority misalignment or estimation failures)
   • Where did unplanned work come from? (This reveals process gaps or boundary issues)
   • Which commitments to others were met vs missed? (This reveals reliability patterns)
   • What was the ratio of deep work to reactive work? (Target: at least 40% deep work)

4. Decide — Identify 1-3 concrete adjustments for the next period. Specific and testable: "Block 9-11am as no-meeting time" not "do more deep work."

5. For retrospectives — Facilitate with:

   • What went well (keep doing)
   • What could improve (change one thing)
   • Action items (assigned, with deadlines)
   • Separate observations from emotions from actions (because conflating them derails retros)

Gate: Review compares planned vs actual. At least one pattern is surfaced from the data. Adjustments are specific and testable (not aspirational). Dead tasks are removed, not carried forward indefinitely.

GOAL Mode

Load: references/daily-weekly-planning.md, references/llm-productivity-failure-modes.md

1. Determine scope: Quarterly OKRs, annual goals, project milestones, or personal development goals.

2. Structure goals using the outcome hierarchy:

   Level	Timeframe	Format	Example
   Vision	1-3 years	Narrative	"Become the team's go-to person for data infrastructure"
   Objective	Quarter	Qualitative outcome	"Make the data pipeline reliable enough that on-call is boring"
   Key Result	Quarter	Measurable milestone	"Reduce pipeline failures from 12/month to 2/month"
   Initiative	Weeks	Concrete project	"Add circuit breakers to the 5 highest-failure-rate jobs"

3. Validate each goal against:

   • Measurability: How will you know it is done? (Binary completion or metric target)
   • Influence: Do you control the outcome, or does it depend on others? (Goals you do not control are hopes, not goals — reframe as the actions within your control)
   • Tension: Does this goal conflict with another goal? (Surface tradeoffs explicitly)
   • Stretch calibration: 70% confidence of achievement = good stretch. 100% = sandbagging. 30% = aspirational wish.

4. Connect to daily work — Map goals down to weekly themes and daily tasks. Goals that do not connect to this week's work are not goals yet — they are intentions.

Gate: Every goal has a measurable completion condition. Goals connect to at least one concrete next action. Conflicting goals have explicit tradeoff decisions. Quarterly goals have monthly check-in milestones.

LLM Failure Modes in Productivity Work

See references/llm-productivity-failure-modes.md for the complete failure mode catalog (aspirational planning, unestimated tasks, generic advice, agendaless meetings, shallow reviews, activity-based status). Universal failure modes in skills/shared-patterns/llm-domain-failure-modes-base.md.

Prioritization Frameworks (Cross-Mode Reference)

Used in TASK, PLAN, and GOAL modes.

Apply frameworks to the specific situation. Producing a framework explanation instead of an applied prioritization is a failure mode (see references/llm-productivity-failure-modes.md).

Output Conventions

• Markdown with clear headers. Scannable by someone with 30 seconds.
• Tables for comparisons, schedules, and priority matrices.
• Time blocks in HH:MM - HH:MM format with task and estimated duration.
• Status labels: Done, In Progress, Blocked, Deferred, Dropped.
• Executive-facing content: < 200 words. Team-facing: as detailed as needed.
• Every recommendation is specific enough to act on today. "Improve focus" is not actionable. "Block 9-11am as no-meeting deep work time" is.

Reference Loading Table