Personal Productivity (v1.0)

This is longer than most posts but I think you will find some helpful suggestions.

Personal Productivity (v1.0) –

This paper focuses on methods to complete our personal tasks and projects that align with personal goals all while dealing with time constraints and time demands from our job, family, friends, and other commitments. I will discuss ways to improve personal productivity with suggestions and checklists to help us stay focused, learn to prioritize with the ultimate goal of getting the right things done on time. A good system uses habits to make things as frictionless as possible to work towards completing our goals. It’s also a work in progress as we apply things and then make changes that work better for us. I will revisit this in a future post and see what comments there are from readers.

As you read this you will see repetition of habits/suggestions some of which you probably already incorporate in your life. Take some of the others if they sound reasonable and see if they work for you. Tailor the suggestions to make a workable plan you can follow.

Do you know your personality type? If not, you should consider taking a test or two. Look at the Gallup StrengthsFinder and Myers-Briggs tests and a third one perhaps. The first one will tell you what your strengths and weaknesses are while the second on will evaluate introvert/extrovert styles, thinking/feeling, etc. personality profiles. Knowing your strengths and personality type can help you create a system that works best for you.

Here are the links:

https://www.gallup.com/cliftonstrengths/en/strengthsfinder.aspx

https://www.myersbriggs.org/my-mbti-personality-type/mbti-basics/

https://www.16personalities.com/free-personality-test

Feel free to modify and personalize the suggestions so that they work for you. Choosing and developing your system does not mean that you are married to it. Things change, and you should improve how you do things over time as better habits develop. Personalize it to make it yours.

Remember this, as you start each day, it’s almost always best to tackle the hardest or most challenging task first. As the day wears on, your energy will dissipate, and time left to complete the task diminishes too. What follows reminds us of all the stuff we must deal with daily and then some thoughts on what helps and what drags us down. Read through the next few pages, think how it may apply to you and then try some of the suggestions.

We all have lots of “stuff” to deal with such as:

Emails
Calendar planning/maintenance
Meetings
Interruptions
Learning/study/school/self-improvement
Personal – home tasks, shopping, cooking, cleaning, bathing, life partner needs, pets
Sleep – need 7-9 hours of quality sleep
Write/produce/create – analog or digital
Improvement/learning – can we learn to be better more in the know?
Planning and reviewing progress
Volunteering and giving to others
Family and friends’ commitments and interactions
Spiritual practice and quiet meditation, thoughtfulness, some time alone
Physical fitness
Travel or commute
Poor processes that are not efficient
Self-care
Goals
Mission statement
Systems/workflows/processes
Requirements outside our control from job, and other individuals
Brain dump – need to get stuff out of our head so we won’t be distracted
And on, and on…

Things that Enhance or Reduce Productivity

Energy level – are you a morning person or a night owl? What time of day are you most productive? Why?
Attitude – varies from day to day or within a day. If you have successes, you’re your attitude may be great. Failures or setbacks may produce a “screw it” feeling. Need to consider how to increase resilience. Could obstacles be thought of as opportunities? Try to think in terms of abundance. There’s enough for everybody. Maybe think in terms of “things I can do” instead of “I must do’s”. It’s a change in mindset which is important. Sometimes only a little forward progress is possible in a particular day.

Attitude and discipline are there to push us to do those short-term things that are painful but add to long term gain. Do your best to enjoy and be sincere in what you do so it can be fun sometimes. This could be a mind-set shift for you. Try to enjoy the journey. Could it be more like a game? It certainly helps to know what your passion is that provides your internal fire. Remember that you must do some tasks because someone else says so. You have a right to be satisfied with what you do and feel good about it.
Time available – we all have five minute projects, 30 to 60 minute projects and ones that may take all day or more. Some tasks take careful planning and are multi-step/multi-day or more. Think of what will it will take to get it completed and the order of the steps needed. Write down the steps and use action verbs to help visualize what to do.
Resources – may include time as well as money, equipment, support staff or delegates, right location, knowledge or if lack of it, can I learn how? Who can help you? Can you ask them to help? Can you return the help with something that helps them?
Focus – are you committed and disciplined to get this done? Are you committed to 2 to 3 important tasks/projects or feel that you have 50 things to do? Prorbably best to focus on a few, doing them better instead of just getting lots of them done quickly. Overcommitment leads to feeling overwhelmed. Best to stay on task as restarting after an interruption takes time to get going again and redirecting your focus and thoughts.
Support – do you have help from peers, boss, spouse or partner? It could be just emotional support and “cheering” you on or mentoring, giving you some guidance when you lack knowledge and so on.
Distractions – we all deal with phone calls, emails pop-ups, ad hoc meetings, digital games, etc. Need to work to minimize by turning off or silencing digital interruptions when you need to “do deep work”. An addiction to distractions is the death of creative production. That email or text can wait.
Good processes or workflows – good ones can enhance our work and make some things seem effortless. Good ones can become like a habit. We can do it without thinking. Put what you do on paper and look at it. Ask a peer to see what they think. You can do better. Processes need to be versatile enough to handle complex projects, but easy enough to use when low on energy.
Environment – do you have all that you need to get started? Reference materials, cables/chargers, notes, pen, paper, coffee, bathroom break, clean desk and keyboard, devices silenced, right temperature and lighting, snacks, timer, etc. Have a small notepad, or index card or app for things that pop in your head so you don’t forget them. You don’t have to deal with them, just capture the thought and get back to work. The goal is to have what you need so you don’t have to be distracted by leaving your desk for a while. Some people like to wear headphones or Airpods to keep distractions down by playing music or white noise. Consider being hard to reach when you have something you really want to work on. Go to a quiet location out of the office or home. Turn off or silence your phone and notifications.
Focus is more important than intelligence in most cases.
Hang out with a peer group that gets things done or has skill sets superior to yours if you want to change. It helps to absorb their energy and emotions. Model your behavior on successful people if it still is within your mission and goals. You’ll never get better at tennis if you play against newbies.
Minimalism – a secret to genius is simplicity. Fill your life with what’s necessary to accomplish things. Acquiring “stuff” weighs us down. Don’t focus on 50 tasks, just pick 3 or 4 that are important (think prioritize), finish them and then pick a few more. Read books or review videos about this topic. Focus on valuable priorities.

Other Thoughts –

Need a desire to do better. Do you have “the want to’s”? Why or why not?
What is one’s purpose, if you don’t know, life can be hard. You should really think about this. You’ll need a lighthouse out there or target to guide you. Take time to think on this and write it down. It’s not written in stone and will change over time.
For projects or life guidance, think “where am I?, where do I want to go? How will get there?”
You need to figure out a way to do what you have to do and have fun; otherwise, the day will seem very long. Check your attitude. Think gratitude more often.
Is what you are doing going to make a difference for you, for others, for life, in a year?
Let yourself be successful, even it’s not perfect, give yourself a pat on the back. Progress is key.
Your imagination is a future view of yourself.
When planning, a year from now is over the horizon. Very hard to see that far. Think in terms of 90 days as you can get your arms around that time span. Maybe hand draw out your major projects and think how long it will take. Some planners use a Kanban style of viewing projects which is visually helpful to most people. You can write the project’s description on cards and move them from column to column: Tasks Column, In Progress Column, Completed Column. You can do this on a white board or an app.
For routine things like emails or phone calls, decide when you will handle them. Avoid looking at email multiple times a day. Perhaps look over email quickly early in the day to see if any are urgent and then once more at the end of the day. Don’t respond to every text when you get it. Let people you deal with routinely know how your work… if they text you, it will be answered but not immediately. If they have something urgent, tell them to call you. For those who get lots of email, you’ll just have to set up time blocking to deal with email to act on it, forward to others, or delete it.
Be sure you are working on the right things. Is what you are doing meaningful? Does it fit into your mission and works towards completing a goal?
We own our time and can control most of what we do. Say heck yeah, I can do that.
Look at the place where you have captured tasks, to-dos, and prioritize what needs to be done today. Maybe three or four is all you can do depending on demands of others. Can you say no sometimes? You’ll have to. For those tasks that are on today’s horizon, consider using colors to differentiate or prioritize them. Highlight the one you must do today.
Careful of Parkinson’s Law that work expands to fill the time allotted. Give yourself “x” minutes to do it. Use a timer if needed to push through.
As you can, use Protected Time which is yours to do what you want/need to do.
Consider the value of your time. For some work, can you delegate it. Use assistants or Fivver maybe.
There are apps, like Calendly, (https://calendly.com) to let others see your calendar to set a meeting so you don’t have to go back and forth. You set what time you are available.

Tools and techniques that can help:

Take ten minutes at the start of the day to look over things that you noted from last evening’s wrap up and today’s task list and calendar. Minimize interruptions briefly by silencing electronics. Be aware of the one or two things you MUST DO today. Color those on calendar or to-do list and highlight somehow.
Some steps suggested by the ModernHealthMonk from YouTube:
1. Plan your day the night before
2. Consider/review your habits the night before
3. Organize your Project in an app like Evernote or Notion
4. Dedicate one hour a week to reviewing how you are doing. Maybe time to re-organize as things and priorities change. Think course correction.
5. Clean your desk daily and have it set up with everything needed before you start.
6. Instead of being more productive try doing fewer things better.
7. Keep and follow a calendar.

Are your daily routines addressed? These “have to’s” that often are for others and not always in your control. Be sure that they occupy a place on your calendar if appropriate otherwise keep them “in sight” so they don’t slip by.
Learning to prioritize – consider using the Eisenhower matrix. Start with most important or difficult project/task while energy is high. Stick with it until completion.
Good processes and smooth workflows – Goal Setting, Time Blocking on calendar, GTD (Getting Things Done by David Allen) methodology, email management processing, time management techniques. Consider how you get things done, what are you missing, did you have to do something over, are you getting things done on time, etc.?
Saying no – we have to do that sometimes or else we’ll be a slave to others.
Apps – digital tools can be helpful. Choose carefully and ask others what they use, learn how they work. Try to pick the best for what you need to do and stick with it. Try to avoid “shiny new toy” attraction. Not saying to never try something new, but it’s better to delve deep into the application that you are using to make sure it fulfills its potential and that you are familiar with all its features before discarding and starting anew.

Popular apps:

Evernote for document retention – great search tools
ToDoist – is easy and low cost task manager now with more templates to help getting organized.
Trello and Asana– are more sophisticated project managers
Notion – is free flow and has a learning curve with powerful features and back linking capability. Roam has some similar features but takes time to learn.
Google email and calendar as well as their office suite.
Office 365 Suite
LibreOffice – a free suite of all the popular apps (word processing, spreadsheets, presentation work, etc.)
Digital timer such as Be Focused
CopyClip or some other free app that remembers the last 10 or more cut/copy that you have made.

Review process – you must look back weekly to see what was done, could we have done better? Did we miss something. If we have same items on “to do list” that we kick down the street, do we really need to do them? Look over how you are doing things. Can you do better? Of course.
Two minute rule: if you have a task that you can do in 2 minutes or less, just do it. No need to put on calendar.
Five minute rule: this can help with procrastination. For a task that you keep putting off, force yourself to take just five minutes of effort. Sometimes just getting started will result in your moving past five minutes. It’s a small commitment, but may be just what’s needed to do that thing you keep putting off.
Pomodoro technique – use an app that limits you to 25 minutes of focused work, then a five minute break, repeat. We need to stand up or stretch to keep our freshness. There plenty of free apps to download to help with this. Some people might prefer a longer work stretch, say 40 minutes and then break.
When your write out a task, use action verbs to describe what to do.
Time Blocking – create a space on your calendar for an hour or more in one “block” where you will devote your efforts uninterrupted for the completion of a task. Maybe block out multiple times over a week to see if you can complete things especially if there is a deadline. Also use the calendar for meetings, calls you must make, or out of office activities. Plan time for travel if needed.
Batching – works for some people. Put similar tasks together such as running errands, make several phone calls, posting accounts, and so on.
Make it with a deadline – forces you to work under pressure to get something done by such and such a date/time. It creates a sense of urgency.
M.A.R.T. Goals – Specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely. Goals that are specific have a significantly greater chance of being accomplished. To make a goal specific, the five “W” questions must be considered:
1. Who: Who is involved?
2. What: What do I want to accomplish? What will the finished project look like?
3. Where: where is this goal going to be achieved.
4. When: When do I want to finish it?
5. Why: Why do I want to achieve this goal?

Many believe that while goals are important, good systems are more important as accomplishing a goal is only temporary. Getting to the next one and continuing is more important.

At some time, each week, do a brain dump to capture thoughts and notes for later action. Get it out of your head and put it in a trusted place so you don’t have to deal with it now and so it won’t get lost. You’ve probably jotted down things on stickies or digital apps during the week. Get them consolidated and decide what you will do with them.
Enjoying the journey – this is important. It’s much more pleasurable to enjoy what you are doing. Energy levels will be higher, attitudes will be better, and productivity will nearly take care of itself. Find ways to enjoy what you are doing.
At the end of the day, review your calendar and planner and organize things for tomorrow so you can get off to a good start. This will save time and help you stay focus so you can pick up where you left off on the next morning.
Grade your day, A, B, C. Write a note as to why it was that grade. What could you have done better or differently?
Remind yourself what’s important. Don’t let the frustrations of the day drag you down.
Find a calendar that works for you and learn how to get the most out of it. Google Calendar probably has the most bells and whistles (features).
Don’t forget, it helps to use apps that sync across all your devices when you are reviewing which apps to help life be easier.
Don’t overthink all this. It’s not complicated. You just need to design one that works for you. Utilize tools that will support what you do and not make life more complicated and slow you down.
For goals, be sure that it’s clearly defined so you can aim at the center of the target.
Checklists can help to remember things you need for a project, travel, and so on. Setting up templates can be handy for projects with recurring tasks. Evernote and Todoist both have an extensive list of templates. Just copy the template, edit if to suit your needs, rename it, and use it again and again.
When you finish something, archive it as you may need to refer to it again. This falls under file management function.
Find a calendar that works for you and learn how to get the most out of it. Google Calendar probably has the most bells and whistles (features). There are others such as Fantastical and BusyCal.
Don’t forget, it helps to use apps that sync across all your devices.

Carl Pullein, management consultant and prolific producer of quality content on YouTube and his own website offers four levels for personal productivity.

No level – basically has a calendar and writes down things on “notes”
Beginner – uses a Task Manager, good beginning to collect items that need to be done. Trys Tags to create context and learns what works.
Intermediate – Trying apps to see what works for one’s own particular approach and what works and what doesn’t. Doesn’t really use weekly planning or review. Sometimes feels overwhelmed and wonders where to go from here. Just dumping everything in a Task Manager without organizing is not going to produce the desired results.
Enlightened expert – Best to eliminate unimportant tasks and only focus on work on what will take you closer to reaching your goals. It’s understood that this person has some kind of mission statement that aligns with what they want to do or accomplish. It must resonate with you and be your own. For the most part, they strive to complete things that will move in the desired direction knowing that some interruptions and “other” tasks required by others will have to be done when you can’t say no. This person focuses on 4-5 tasks a day. They take time to plan the day and have time for deep thought on the direction that will lead to progress. They remain focused on planning and reviewing. They know what and why they want certain things in life. If you find that you are doing too many tasks for others you may need to re-align your priorities. Don’t focus on only doing more in less time (fools gold), but only put meaningful work in front of you. Eliminate what does not carry you towards your overall goals.

Getting Things Done – methodology in a nutshell:

Capture and collect all your “stuff”
Organize and process it by deciding is it just one step or multi-step, or just something to refer to in the future. Further thought needed to clarify if by categorization, tagging, prioritizing, or place into context (who, what, when, why, how).
Now organize it. Is it actionable? If so, put it on your calendar or to-do or task list. delegate it, file for future use, or trash it.
Review and reflect on it at least weekly. A quick daily perusal helps and that is combined with a deeper weekly review. Great to check things off but if you keep rescheduling, ask yourself if you really need to do it?
Do it or engage with it. You will know exactly what to work on.

To be continued…