5 tips to Increase Your Productivity

Ever feel like you are stuck and can’t move forward on a goal?

 

 

Check out the tips contained in this blog:

1. How to set yourself up for success by preparing the day before
2. How to get organized so you make progress on your goals
3. Daily actions that will increase your productivity
4. Implementing a weekly review that will give back 10 hours a week.

 

How Productive are you . . . Really?

Most people are running flat out, whether they are working in corporate or their own business.  They are exhausted, don’t sleep well and dread when the alarm goes off.  There has to be a better way to live . . . there is.

What being Productive Means

Being productive means taking the actions that will move you ahead in the attainment of your goals.

Your productive day tomorrow actually starts the night before.  Preparation for the next morning includes setting out the items for your morning ritual (more on that in an upcoming blog), for example:

• Morning coffee or tea is set up
• Your journal is placed near your reading and writing area
• Exercise clothes are gathered
• Work clothes are laid out

After you have finished putting together all the items needed to start your day, it is time to review your schedule for the next day.  This would be the time to make sure you include on your schedule for the next day, at least three action items that move you towards your goals. It’s often difficult to schedule in goal items, especially if you have full-time job and a part-time business.   But if you don’t make an intentional effort to add these three priority items into your schedule, it won’t happen.  It’s important to work towards your goals every day.  Gather any materials you need for those three items. For example, I write on my blog in the mornings on the train.  I need to make sure I have the last blog edits on my thumb drive so I don’t have to spend time searching for latest version.

Getting those priority items done each day will give you a real sense of accomplishment and move you closer to the attainment of your goals.  At the end of the week, when you look back to what you had done you will find that you have accomplished a lot.

 

What will Sabotage your Efforts to be Productive?

Having to spend 30-45 minutes of your evening trying to locate everything you will need (notes, phone numbers, etc.) for the next day can be extremely frustrating.  After a long day at work, the last thing you want to do is to hunt for items you will need tomorrow. This only needs to happen a few times and you will give up preparing for the next day.  You are tired, your will power is low, and you just won’t create this habit.  How do you make sure you have what you need when you need it?

Gather all the stuff in one Place and Process it

Your mind is a terrible place to try and keep 30 different ‘To-Do’s’. If you are not already an organized person, you will need to spend a day or two initially setting up the following:

1. First, get an In-Basket at home and make it habit to always put all items you need for the next day (e.g. notes taken from meetings on paper or electronic format, etc.) in it. Put all future notes in the same “in basket” so you know where it is.
2. You’ll need to take the time to process each item and determine what action needs to be taken with that item. From there you will have a list of action items/To-do’s. For example, you will have a list of calls and emails you will need to make the name day. Dave Allen, in his wonderful book Getting Things Done,  provides a good methodology for being productive (available as an  Audiobook as well).  I recommend it.
3. Next, it is important that you have all the information you will need to handle those above-listed actions. For example, if you have to make a phone call the next day, write down the phone number on your call list so when you have 10 minutes before a meeting, you can pull out your list of calls and make them. Productive? Absolutely!  No searching for the phone number required!  All the information you need is right at your fingertips, right when you need it.

The first time you gather everything and process it may take several hours.  It is quite an undertaking, but the benefits are worth it so don’t procrastinate taking this action.  Getting everything together and regularly processing it is the only way to free your mind.  The good news is that after the major organization is done, processing items every couple of days only takes a few minutes.

You should be able to use this methodology for anything you need to do in your personal and professional lives.

This simple step of gathering all items and creating actionable items the night before will free up your mind so you can start out the next day with a clear plan and a clear mind.  Not to mention, a good night’s sleep.

 

The Next Day

The next day you wake up fresh and ready to go.  You know your priorities for the day and you have already reviewed your schedule.  Now it is time to execute.  For example, if you have 10 minutes before a meeting, make a phone call or two, starting with the most important ones.  If a big project lands on your desk, determine the most immediate action to take (e.g. figure out who needs to be part of a planning session on the project and schedule the meeting). Then put the project on your weekly review where you will spend time planning out the project.

 

When you finish a task, mark it off your list.  Work on a priority item until you finish it.  It you can’t finish the item, because additional information is needed, write a quick summary of what was competed.  You’ll be able to restart the work much faster by leaving yourself notes. Studies have shown that it may take several minutes before you’re able to get back to where you left off if you don’t make notes.

 

Weekly Review – where Productivity Happens

Brian Tracy, management consultant, says, “Every minute you spend in planning saves 10 minutes in execution”.  This means taking one hour a week for a review will save you 10 hours a week.  How would you like to have 10 hours back each week?

First, set up a certain day and time to do this weekly review and keep to that time every week.   It will be a time that you will have all of your materials at your finger-tips so you can be effective.  Management guru, Michael Hyatt, uses Sunday night to review his past week and prepare for the next one.

The weekly review is made of two main parts.  The first is review of how you did on your weekly goals and then make adjustments as needed.  The second part is to evaluate new items (projects); determine their priority with your existing goals and to break down those projects into actionable tasks.

The Weekly Review – Part 1: Assess how you are performing against set goals.

• Review how you did for the week on your major goals.  If a major goal is to lose weight – did you lose the 1 pound this week that you set as a goal?  If you did great; if not, why not?  Did you follow your plan for losing weight such as counting calories, or recording what you eat, or exercising 5 days a week for 30 minutes, whatever the goals you have set for yourself for the week.  Examine the actions you took to achieve your goal.
• If you didn’t reach your goal, you need to make adjustments in your actions so that you can recover quickly and get back on track the following week. Continuing with our weight loss example, if you had only worked out 3 times last week instead of the 5 times you had set as a weekly goal, determine the cause of why you only worked out 3 times.  Were you too busy to workout on certain days?  Did you have a scheduled day and time for each of the workouts?  If not, schedule in a time.

 

 

The Weekly Review – Part 2: Adding new Projects

Take a look at your current monthly, 3 months and yearly goals along with the new project or the new opportunity.  How does this project fit in with your current goals?  Does this new project or opportunity replace some current goals, meaning you have a new goal?  If it is part of your current goals, how will you fit this additional project into the schedule and yet stay on track?

On the other hand, if this is not part of your current goals, you need to decide quickly if adding new goals is necessary at this time. If not, table the new project.  If yes, what is the priority?  Determining the priority of this project will help you to determine how much time needs to be invested in it and how soon you need to start on this project.

Breaking down big Projects

How do you eat an Elephant?  A bite at a time!  (Note: no animals were harmed or eaten as a result of this blog!)

The same holds true when tackling big projects.  Break them down into manageable chunks (smaller bites). Earlier you took a few immediate actions on the big projects just to gather some initial information.  Now is the time to devote energy to breaking down big projects into smaller chunks.  This will work on projects for your full-time job, your part-time business or hobbies. It will be helpful to treat everything you do as a project, whether the project is planning your vacation or creating a marketing plan.

How do you breakdown a large project?

1. A large project may have 400 tasks. So the first thing to understand that you are not going to be able to come up with all 400 tasks at one sitting.  Take that pressure off of yourself.  Be confident that each week as you revisit the project you will come up with new tasks that will move you forward.
2. Start by breaking the project down into major components. As an example, for me, starting this blog had major components such as determining the target audience, setting up web hosting, creating a logo, creating a blog marketing plan, creating blog content, etc.  Within each component there could be many tasks (e.g. determining which web host provider to use).
3. For each project I determined the next actions that I need to take for major categories, set the priority of the actions and put those on my call, email, or computer work lists. Then every day, I don’t have to spend time thinking which tasks I need to do first, as I had already prioritize them.  All I do each day is execute from my list – no wasted time thinking what I need to do in any given day.

 

Minimize Your Disruptions

Some final words on your daily work . . .

Have you ever been working on something, in the zone/flow, coming up with new ideas and really cranking out the work and your phone buzzes?  You read the text; send back a brief text; go back to your laptop and say, “Now where was I?”.  The text wasn’t urgent and it almost never is but stopping and taking even a minute to answer it will set you back a couple of minutes to regroup and reengage.  A few minutes later, the phone buzzes again.  A couple of minutes here and there can add up quickly to minutes that you do not have to spare.

Another disrupter is you checking your emails several times a day and responding to emails, keeping your inbox pretty empty.  I recently was copied on an email that was sent at 2:36 pm, stating an updated document was needed by 2:45 pm.  In 9 minutes!  No forewarning of the deadline.  No explicit reason for the urgency, but by gosh, they needed the document now!  If you allow emails to dictate your priorities, at the end of the day you will find you didn’t complete YOUR priority items.

 

So, turn off the text chime.  Resolve to look at chats/emails twice a day (maybe this excludes emails from the boss) and check your emails only during your less creative, less energetic time.  I’m a morning person and for me, the first couple of hours of the day are my most productive time. I use this time to write and focus on priority items. Find your most productive time of the day and set aside that time for your deep thinking and work.

We all have 24 hours in the day and when they are gone, they are gone.  Decide today to move your business forward by developing a habit of planning each week and executing on that plan on a daily basis.  If you do that, you’ll be productive and successful.