To be more productive: Make fewer decisions
Productivity is simpler than many people make it out to be.
1. Don’t sweat the small stuff — Plan for them
Take the common daily tasks we have to do such as deciding what to eat for breakfast/lunch/dinner, what clothes to wear, etc.
Every night before you go to bed, lay out the clothes you want to wear the next day. That way you don’t waste time and energy frantically grabbing clothes to wear in the morning. You can save your decision-making power for the choices that matter in your life by keeping certain aspects of your life constant like the meals you eat or the clothes you wear.
Steve Jobs, Einstein, Andy Warhol, and many others are famously known for wearing the same style of clothing daily allowing him to focus more on his work.
The goal is to reduce the brain power you use on lower priority tasks and to reserve it for more important ones.
2. Defining Productivity: Daily/Weekly Highlights
Using tips from Make Time by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky having 3 highlights streamlines your productivity because you focus on completing those 3 tasks. If you can’t complete it, then move it to the next day or adjust the task so it’s more manageable.
You’re only unproductive if you aren’t intentional with your time, not if you don’t get the tasks, you wanted complete.
Here are 3 criteria for choosing a highlight:
Urgency: What is the most pressing thing you have to do today
Satisfaction: Which highlight will bring you most satisfaction at the end of the day?
Joy: When I reflect on today, what will bring me the most joy
Write them somewhere you’ll see whether on your phone or on a sticky note. Keep it close. Refer to it whenever you feel distract to stay on task.
If you haven’t read Make Time, I highly recommend the book. You can learn more on their website: https://maketime.blog/
3. Schedule your Day
Everyone has a schedule to their day whether they realize it or now. We’re all creatures of habit and that’s a good thing. Building a habit allows you to go on autopilot for the tasks that shouldn’t require much thought/energy allowing you to focus on the important.
Borrowing from Cal Newport’s book, Deep Work, where he discusses the benefits of having a structure to your day.
Break your day into chunks of work time, relax time, answering email time, etc. Here’s an example:
8 am — 10 am: Deep work
10 am — 10:30 am: Answering non-urgent emails & messages
10:30–11 am: Exercise (walking, stretching)
11 am — 1 pm: Focused Work
1–2pm: Lunch
2–4: Deep Work
4–5pm: Answering emails
You can set up auto-reply to have people call you if it the email or message is urgent. You likely won’t be able to stick perfectly to the schedule, but the reasoning is that as long as you have an idea of what you need to do each hour of the day, you can be more intentional with your time, complete your daily highlights, and improve your productivity and focus.
If you’re day is unpredictable, you can schedule time for that as well by blocking out certain hours to accommodate for sporadic tasks /obligations.
If you’d like to read more on Deep Work & Cal Newport’s other books, click here for his website: https://www.calnewport.com/books/deep-work/
Bonus Tip: Decision Matrix
Eisenhower had a decision matrix when he was general in the United States Army and as the Allied Forces Supreme Commander during World War II.
Helps quickly decide what tasks are important
I’ve used this decision matrix for many personal and professional projects to help decide important and urgent tasks I need to accomplish. You may find that you already do this implicitly without realizing it.
For example, if there’s a water leakage in your home and you have a report due for work on Wednesday. What do you do? You deal with the water leak first to either stop or call a water service technician and schedule a different time for you to work on your report.
Being more productive is easier than you think. The hardest part is to get the ball rolling and once you do, it becomes second nature. Even if you falter one day or one week of unproductiveness, don’t worry about it.
Get back up and keep going. Consistency leads to progress and success.
Consistent persistence is the key to improvement.