What you need to get productive right now

I meet a lot of people who are overworked, stressed out and generally feeling like everything is piling up on top of them. Many of these people work in IT, and for them I think that’s part of the problem.

The peculiar thing about tech-savvy people is that they tend to look for technological solutions to their productivity issues. They look for productivity software, mobile applications, collaboration tools and the like, but usually don’t get long term value from these gadgets. There is an initial flush of productivity when these tools are first adopted, but within a few weeks they’re back to where they were: stressed and overloaded. And their technological solution is languishing on the hard drive, half full of weeks-old actions and tasks. The ’solution’ has just added to their workload.

Solve the issue

If you’re trying to get productive, there are really only 2 things that you need:

1. CLARITY and
2. FOCUS

Clarity

CLARITY is being specific about what the task is that needs to be done next. Define it, quantify it, and describe precisely what you’re going to do about it.

Focus

FOCUS is a decision to get that task done, forsaking all distractions till it’s finished. The phone rings – ignore it and get on with it. An email arrives – ignore it (or better still, close your email). Every time you decide to stay focused is a victory for you and it makes it easier to stay focused for the next task. And the next, and the next.

Productivity tools can help, but only after you’ve got clarity and focus.

So decide NOW to have clarity and focus, and your productivity will start to build. And as your productivity gains momentum, you’ll find your stress and sense of overwork will fall away – no technology required.

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Best productivity habit of 2008

The best productivity habit I established last year was using my Daily Imperatives list – my focus has increased and I’m getting my must-do items done every day.

Here’s how I use it:

• It’s like a to-do list but I only put things on it that must get done today – anything else goes onto the standard to-do list. After double-checking all the items are must-do, the list I end up with is rarely long so I know I’ll get to the less important items as well during the day.
• For every entry on my list, I describe the action and specify the desired outcome. So instead of writing:

  “Fred re documentation”

  I write:

  “Call Fred: Request completion of design document by Friday”

  Then when I get to the item in a few hours time, I can quickly action it instead of having to remember what it was about Fred and documentation I had to do.

• I number the items in order of importance. Occasionally I only number the first few, but I notice that my days are more effective when I number them all at the start of the day.

  I then start at 1 and only move on to 2 when 1 is finished. If I’m blocked on 1, say if I’m waiting for someone to call me back, the worksheet has space to jot down notes like ‘Fred will call back by 3pm’. Then I can easily pick up where I left a blocked task off.

  And if I’m interrupted, I don’t waste time after each interruption deciding what I’ll work on next because it’s on the list.

• There’s a place at the top of the worksheet where I enter important leading indicator tasks that I want to do every day. I also put important administrative tasks here too – those things that work best when they’re updated a little each day.

Once I’ve completed the Daily Imperatives, I move on to my regular to-do list.

The productivity gains from the Daily Imperatives list come from 3 main areas:

1. It’s easy to see the important tasks, and to make sure they get done before the more trivial items.
2. Because I have a clear sequenced plan for the day, interruptions are easier to absorb and I don’t waste time re-prioritising.
3. My stress is removed. I work through the list of imperatives, happy in the fact that I’m getting the most important things done first.

A note about ‘urgent’ tasks – if a task is urgent, it’s usually the result of an important task that wasn’t done early enough. Have a quick review of urgent tasks so you can avoid the same situation in the future, and don’t push important tasks to the bottom of the list in favour of them otherwise you’ll end up with yet more urgent tasks.

You can download my daily imperatives worksheet for free here, or by clicking on the image up there at the top of the post.

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To do more you have to do less

To do more, you have to do less

Things always get done more effectively when you focus on them, but there are just so many things that you have to multi-task, right?

How do you reconcile this paradox? Here’s a recent productivity adventure…

Like you, I have more things to do on my various lists than I can get through in a reasonable amount of time. I can identify many of these as ‘backburner’ tasks, but unfortunately I can also identify many as ‘important’. So even if I blow out the backburner tasks, I still end up with too many important tasks.

Recently, I managed to prioritise my list of really important projects down to 7 projects. I decided that I would identify the next action for each and begin to progress them all.

But then I thought about it and tried to project (no pun intended) what would happen if I I took this approach:

For the sake of simplifying the exercise, we’ll assume that each project was made up of 4 1-day tasks and I was working 7 days per week on them.

Pushing ahead with all projects one day at a time, my productivity would look like this:

So the first important project, project A, would finish in week 4, as would all the projects. i.e. NONE of them finish before week 4.

Now, these are important projects, and my definition of ‘important’ projects means that they may well relate to business or financial outcomes. So what if the completion of Project A was worth $10,000? This means I’ll get that $10,000 in 4 weeks. If all the projects were like this then week 4 would be a GREAT week, wouldn’t it?

But what if I focused instead? What if I took one project at a time and saw it through before moving onto the next? Then my productivity would look like this:

Now, I get at least 1 project payoff EVERY WEEK! This has to be better doesn’t it? Even if it’s not a financial payoff, we’re talking about important projects, so this means we achieve something important every week, rather than having 3 weeks of nothing then a big payoff. Furthermore, every single project finishes before it would have in the multi-tasking approach, except Project G, which finishes at the same time.

So what gives? Why do we get suckered into multi-tasking at all? So far I’ve come up with a couple of thoughts on this:

1. We lack the ability to decide which project the highest priority – we can’t work out which one to start with
2. Some projects don’t lend themselves to this kind of focus e.g. getting fit – you can’t get fit in one week – you have to build fitness over time
3. It feels very difficult to identify something as important and choose to do nothing about it.

The reality is though, that trying to move too many projects forward will mean that none of them get done quickly. When that happens, it’s hard to feel productive. You need to close projects to feel really productive.

I’ve been trying this approach:

1. Try to decide your prioritisation criteria without considering the actual projects you have on. E.g. You might decide that relationships are top priority.
2. Apply these criteria to the important projects on your list. E.g. organising a family holiday might take priority over doing your tax return for example if relationships are top priority.
3. If you still can’t decide, pick one at random and defer the rest.
4. Do it.

The good thing about this approach is that it really doesn’t matter which project you start with. If you realise that you didn’t choose the best one to start with, just finish it anyway, then move on to the one you should have started with. They’ll both be finished faster than if you’d multi-tasked them.

The other payoff that I’ve found is that once I’ve decided to defer a project, I feel much more ‘in the zone’ about the project that I have decided to focus on. It’s all good.

The pointy end of multi-tasking – don’t answer the phone!

This post extends on the idea of working towards the pointy end of the bell curve. I.e. If you consciously do things differently to most people you will not end up the same as most people – average.

I’ve been thinking about multi-tasking, and conclude that for computers it’s a good thing. For people, it’s a bad thing. I think the reason is all about processing capacity.

Generally, computers have more processing capacity than they need, so it makes sense to chug away on several things at once.

Even though the human brain has a lot of capacity – we can walk, breath, sweat, digest and age all at the same time – the limiting factor seems to be our attention. Our attention is almost always directed at something – it doesn’t have spare capacity. It is almost always operating at full capacity, which is when multi-tasking fails to be efficient.

So why do we subject ourselves to so much multi-tasking? Why do we set up our work environments to allow so much interruption?

I’ve posted before on email, but what about Instant Messenger, the phone, SMS, Twitter – even people just walking up to you and asking you stuff when you’re trying to get something done?

If most people just let it happen, then in order to move towards the pointy end of the curve, I need to start to NOT let it happen don’t I? Obviously within reason, but maybe introducing a small amount of control of these interruptions will start me on the way to the pointy end…

Try this:

1. Choose what you think is your most productive hour of the day. For this hour:
   1. Shut down messenger
   2. Divert your phone – desk and cellular – to message bank (don’t let it ring – that breaks your concentration)
   3. Hang a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign or some other indicator where people approaching your desk can see it
   4. Block out this time in your calendar – accept no meetings
2. Enjoy the feeling of focused, uninterrupted, productive time
3. If people get miffed that you’re unavailable, put a bit of extra effort outside of this hour into helping them with their enquiry.

Remember to un-divert your phone

Just one hour per day like this is one hour of focused productivity more than most people spend – and that will push you towards the pointy end.

The Pointy End of Email Productivity

If most people struggle with being really productive – and I believe they do, then one way to be more productive is to simply identify what most people do, and avoid doing that. Have I stated a universal truth that was previously invisible to me? I’ve called this line of thought ‘the pointy end’, because it’s all about trying to get myself into the point end of the bell curve (normal distribution curve). If most people are in the middle of the curve (which they are by definition), then if I do what they are not doing, it will put me at one of the ends. Obviously I want to be at the good end J

I thought I would do some experimentation in the workplace.

I observed that most people (including myself):

• leave their email open all day, and enable the pop-up toast alert to pop-up and chime whenever an email arrives. I also observe that they reflexively look at the pop up, and more times than not, flick over to email to read the whole message.
• answer their phone when it rings, even if they are in deep concentration and are annoyed by the call.
• allow themselves to be interrupted by colleagues, and will allow that interruption to continue for a surprisingly long time e.g. 10-15 minutes.

Experiment 1 – Close email.

I decided to close my email for periods of the day. I’ve seen this discussed on various blogs, and seemed like the easiest place to start. I decided to check it first thing in the morning, just before lunch mid afternoon, and just before I go home.

Wow, it’s hard! I realise that I’ve accidentally established the BAD HABIT of checking email every few minutes. At first I didn’t realise what was happening, but I would just notice myself scanning through all the open programs on my PC. I then realised that I was surfing for email!

It has taken a couple of days to get the rhythm of this, but I’m discovering great tracts of productive time appearing in my days. I invite you to try it for yourself. At first it feels like skipping school (that’s a guilt thing for me), but then it feels liberating!

I haven’t experimented with phone and colleague interruptions yet, they will be the subject of future posts.

I realise I need to do 2 habit-related things:

1. Breaking the habit of checking email every few minutes. This will involve getting into the habit of checking email at certain times of the day, processing the email, then closing email (we only get snail mail 5 times a week – so it must be possible!)
2. Breaking the habit of using my phone as the email security device i.e. not ‘cheating’ and checking email on that device

So, since a habit takes 21 days, I’m committing to this regime for the remainder of June.

Any other tips/suggestions/strategies are welcome!