Steal the Productivity System I Taught to 6,642 Googlers

The Core Workflow is a platform-agnostic productivity system, taught to thousands of Googlers, designed to prevent losing files, tasks, or notes by systematically capturing, organizing, reviewing, and engaging with information.

• The Core Workflow system helps manage tasks, ideas, notes, and media across any digital platform.

• Rely on a system of capture, organize, review, and engage rather than willpower to ensure productivity.

• Consistent application of the workflow makes it second nature, preventing information from being lost.

The Core Workflow is a robust productivity system that synthesizes frameworks like Getting Things Done and Building a Second Brain into a practical corporate environment. It operates on four types of information: tasks, ideas, notes, and media, ensuring nothing slips through the cracks. The system emphasizes building reliable processes over relying on willpower, transforming short-term discomfort into compounding long-term benefits.

Understanding Core Workflow

• 00:00:05 The Core Workflow is a systematic productivity system, taught to over 6,600 Googlers, that integrates classic productivity frameworks for a corporate environment. It provides a structured approach to manage four types of information—tasks, ideas, notes, and media—ensuring that no critical item is overlooked. The system is platform-agnostic, meaning it can be implemented with any preferred set of tools, from Google Workspace to Notion or Todoist.

Applying the Core Workflow to Tasks

• 00:01:35 The workflow for tasks begins with 'Capture,' immediately logging a request with details and a due date into a mobile app like Google Tasks. The 'Organize' step is often automatically fulfilled by assigning a due date, ensuring the task is not lost. During the 'Review' phase, typically a scheduled daily session, the task is seen, and concrete calendar time is blocked to address it. Finally, 'Engage' involves executing the work during the allocated time, thus closing the loop on the task.

Underlying Productivity Principles

• 00:03:04 The Core Workflow is underpinned by three key productivity principles: first, willpower and motivation are unreliable, necessitating robust systems; second, a system's purpose is to facilitate action even on challenging days; and third, the initial discomfort of adopting a new routine is minor compared to the persistent stress of stagnation. This workflow reallocates wasted mental energy into a reliable system, yielding compounding benefits over time.

Applying the Core Workflow to Ideas

• 00:04:20 For ideas, the 'Capture' step involves quickly offloading thoughts from the brain to an external platform, such as Google Keep for transient notes. 'Organize' entails a lightweight categorization, like tagging the note with 'thoughts' to sort it for later processing. The crucial 'Review' step involves regularly checking these information inboxes during scheduled sessions, blocking time, and transferring actionable ideas to long-term storage or scheduling them. 'Engage' then involves executing the actions derived from these processed ideas, such as preparing for a negotiation.