Richard Golian

1995-born. Charles University alum. Head of Performance at Mixit. 10+ years in marketing and data.

Castellano Français Slovenčina

Manage subscription Choose a plan

RSS
Newsletter
New articles to your inbox

Article

Simplicity, minimalism and productivity

Minimalism, focus and deep productivity
Richard Golian
Richard Golian · 3 581 reads
Hi, I am Richard. On this blog, I share thoughts, personal stories — and what I am working on. I hope this article brings you some value.
Listen to this article
0:00 / 0:00

My name is Richard Golian. Amidst life's hustle and bustle, I have discovered that I require little. Time for personal passions and the joy of being with those who value my presence just as I value theirs.

Minimalism

My life's belongings might seem scant to some: a select number of books, clothing items in neutral colours, and essential tech gadgets. When it comes to meals, I like the consistency — almost every day the same breakfast and a few lunch rotations.

In short, my life is simple.

Simplicity

When navigating challenges, I veer towards uncomplicated solutions. Simplicity, in my experience, often yields the best results.

Continue

Continue reading

Enter your email to unlock this article and join the newsletter. You can unsubscribe anytime.

Summary

Minimal possessions. Consistent routines. One or two tasks at a time — maximum. Clear performance metrics. Some complex subjects resist easy simplification, but clarity in communication is always worth pursuing. Focus is not a personality trait. It is a decision.

Common questions on this article's topic

Does single-tasking really produce better results than multitasking?
Yes. Research consistently shows that what we call multitasking is actually rapid task-switching, which increases response times and decreases accuracy. Stanford research found that heavy multitaskers performed significantly worse on memory and attention tasks. Studies show it takes an average of 23 minutes to fully refocus after switching tasks. In the article, focusing on one or two tasks at a time is described as the core of productivity.
How does minimalism improve productivity?
By removing distractions and reducing the number of decisions you need to make. Research shows that clutter competes for attention, reduces working memory, and impairs decision-making. In the article, minimalism is not presented as deprivation but as a deliberate choice: fewer possessions, consistent routines, and neutral clothing eliminate the noise that fragments focus. The result is more energy available for the work that matters.
Why is clear communication linked to productivity?
Because unclear communication creates ambiguity, which requires additional mental effort to interpret. In the article, the tendency to overuse technical jargon — often without fully understanding it — is identified as a common obstacle. Simplicity and clarity in communication reduce misunderstandings and save time. The exception is genuinely complex subjects where admitting that something cannot be easily simplified is more honest than oversimplifying it.
Is it better to have one clear goal or many tasks?
In the article, having one goal with a clear metric is strongly preferred over managing many tasks from different areas. Clear performance indicators act as a compass, enabling focused effort toward a defined outcome. This aligns with research showing that organisations using focused performance metrics are significantly more likely to outperform peers in both revenue growth and employee retention.
Can a simple lifestyle lead to better professional results?
In the article, simplicity in personal life — few possessions, consistent meals, minimal shopping — is presented as directly connected to professional effectiveness. By reducing the cognitive load of daily decisions, more mental energy becomes available for deep work. This is not framed as sacrifice but as alignment: understanding what works best for you and building your environment around it.
How do you transition from multitasking to focused work?
In the article, this shift is described as moving from a chaotic phase of constantly juggling shifting responsibilities to a deliberate choice of singular focus. The key insight is that focus is not a personality trait but a decision. It requires recognising that multitasking does not suit everyone equally, and that for some people, deep concentration on one task produces fundamentally better outcomes than spreading attention across many.
Richard Golian

If you have any thoughts, questions, or feedback, feel free to drop me a message at mail@richardgolian.com.

More articles

Where the Money Goes When AI Takes the Work

Prague, 13 May 2026. On my way to work I started thinking about something that stayed with me for days. If most routine work on a computer disappears in the next ten years, and a large share of repetitive manual work disappears with it, what happens to the flow of money? Who pays whom for what? Which economic layers will exist, how large will they be, and what relationships will run between them? This is the six-layer map I sketched as an answer.

15 May 2026·95 reads
Building an AI Stock Market Prediction System That Grades Itself

I am building an AI system to predict the S&P 500. It runs on my own machine, uses free public data — yfinance, FRED, the Shiller dataset — and grades every forecast against reality. This series documents the build itself: the decisions, the methodology, the mistakes. What I will eventually share from the running system is a separate question, and an honest one.

26 April 2026·612 reads
AI sales forecast: 9 traps so far

Yesterday I could not tear myself away from the computer. When I lifted my head, it was half past eight in the evening. I had been sitting alone upstairs for about three hours.

25 April 2026·582 reads
Will AI take my job?

Will AI take my job? A certified Google trainer told me in June 2024 that my profession would cease to exist. Twenty-two months later, my job title has not changed — but ninety percent of what I do during the day is different. I have delegated more of my thinking to AI agents than I thought possible. I am not afraid. This is why, and what it means for anyone asking the same question.

23 April 2026·365 reads
€50,000 Quote vs. Two Hours with Claude Code

One hour. Fifty-five minutes. That is how long it took to build what a Czech software firm had quoted at over €50,000. I built it with Claude Code. Not a prototype. Not a proof of concept. A working tool — the one the company actually needed. By the evening of the same day, it was running on staging. This is not about Claude Code. It is about what Claude Code exposes.

18 April 2026·721 reads
Is AI Making Us Dumber?

I have conducted roughly one hundred and fifty practical interviews over the past four years. Fifty for data specialist roles. A hundred for advertising and performance marketing specialists. Almost every one of them involved sitting down with a candidate over a practical task — something close to a real problem we actually need to solve at the company. Not theory. Not trivia. Applied problem-solving. Over time, I started noticing a pattern.

14 April 2026·671 reads
What AI Hides From You

Before you can teach AI to understand anything, you need to see what it is hiding from you.

11 April 2026·669 reads
When Your AI Agent Joins the Team

The moment other people needed access to it, the problem changed completely. It was no longer about whether the agent could learn. It was about who gets to teach it.

8 April 2026·825 reads
Training an AI Agent That Learns Between Sessions

I wanted to build an agent that doesn't just assist. One that acts.

4 April 2026·876 reads
Local AI Model Limitations: Why I Switched from Ollama to Claude for Autonomous Agents

This is what I learned about local vs cloud AI, and why I switched to Claude Code.

3 April 2026·1 476 reads
Full AI agents or fully offline.

Four days in Catalonia. No computer, no AI, almost no social media. I bought this notebook so that I could write down what I would think about, and what I would come across and learn on the trip.

10.5.2026·323 reads
NEWSLETTER
What I write about, what I am working on, what I learned.
Sent the first Sunday of the month. Unsubscribe anytime.