How Anne-Laure Le Cunff Wrote 200 Articles In One Year

This post was written by Dan Shipper and Annaliese Griffin.

Ask Anne-Laure Le Cunff how she built her productivity stack and you get an answer that sounds more like a Zen koan than a list of apps and life hacks. “My system works for me because it works for me,” she calmly explains.

She’s a former Googler and a serial entrepreneur who now runs Ness Labs — a content hub and community centered around a system she created called “mindful productivity.” It might sound woo-woo, but the results speak for themselves:

She writes 3 articles a week for her newsletter, and has amassed an audience of over 14,000 subscribers since she started. She’ll publish over 200 pieces this year. And as if all that wasn’t enough, she’s simultaneously earning a masters degree in applied neuroscience at King’s College in London.

I’m no productivity slouch, but I still have to wonder: how does she juggle everything she does so effortlessly?

It turns out that the core weapons in Anne-Laure’s mindful arsenal are remarkably analog. She uses a “plus, minus next” format to help her review her week, and combines that with a dead-simple planning technique: every Sunday night, she writes out a single Post-It note with three goals to accomplish for the week.

For her, mindful productivity means consistently taking a step back to examine what she’s doing and why she’s doing it. It helps her make sure that each item on her todo list actually has value before she plows through it.

It undoubtedly works, but she came to it the hard way: through burnout. She’s experienced it twice in her life, and after the second bout she realized that something needed to change.

That’s what spurred her to develop her calmer approach — and it’s what helps her put out 200 articles a year without burning out.

Intrigued? In the rest of this interview we talk in detail about mindful productivity, how she plans and reviews her weeks, and the system she uses to create so. much. content!

Let’s dive in.

Anne-Laure introduces herself and explains mindful productivity

I am the founder of Ness Labs, which is a platform where I offer content, community, and coaching to help people apply mindful productivity principles to their work and lives.

Ness Labs is a response to the vast majority of productivity writing out there, which is all about getting stuff done, without encouraging people to ask themselves why they want to get those things done.

Most productivity hacks focus on which systems and tools to use. Ness Labs is about taking a step back and making time for reflection, making sure that your goals are aligned with what you want to achieve in your life. We want to change your thinking about productivity from quantitative to qualitative. What I mean by that is your week shouldn’t be about getting a lot done, but about doing the things that really matter. That’s how you know whether or not you’re succeeding.

Mindful productivity is also about finding balance in your life. Work can’t take everything out of you. You have time for other things that are important. Time to learn, to explore, to connect with people, to have interesting conversations, and to take care of your mental and physical health.

Mindful productivity started with burnout, but it’s about more than avoiding that

I developed these principles to help me avoid burning out again, because I’ve been through it twice before. The first time was at Google, and then again when I was working on my first startup. It was very difficult for me when the startup failed; I kind of felt like I lost my baby. I had a really hard time getting back on my feet. And I realized two things that I’ve carried with me.

First, I overworked myself by trying to do everything. I felt like if I was doing a lot, then we were moving forward, but I wasn't asking myself if I was moving in the right direction.

Second, I realized when I burned out was that I had attached so much of my identity to my work, that when things didn't go as planned, I struggled when it came to my mental health.

Avoiding burnout isn’t the ultimate goal of mindful productivity, but I think it’s a benefit of applying these principles to your life and work. If you have a mindful, balanced approach to the way you live your life, you will also, as a consequence, end up doing your best work.

Her week starts with a Sunday night review

Whatever productivity apps or system you want to use, I’ve found that the habits that work best are the ones you don't need to force yourself to keep. For me, I have one hour in my calendar every Sunday evening for my weekly review. I know I'm not going to have any calls, dinners with friends, or any other conflicts during that time. And it’s a natural time to look at everything that happened during the week, and plan the week ahead, so it’s easy for me to keep up.

I've built such a strong habit around this that I can't do my work properly if I haven't done my Sunday review—I don't even sleep well on Sunday night if I miss it! It doesn't feel like something I'm forcing myself to do or something I'm not looking forward to, because I’ve made it totally necessary to set myself up for the week.