As the end of January approaches, I thought a post on productivity might be timely. The end of this month is often a moment to pause and reflect on our new year’s resolutions and ponder over whether we are successfully going in the direction of fulfilling our dreams and goals, or whether we have fallen off the wagon. Whether you feel like you’ve been on top of your game or not, this post will help you refocus, stay focused and get more done than ever before.
I have always been a huge fan of writing lists, and planning every hour of every day has become a surefire way for me to fit all my tasks into my weekly schedules and to make sure I take small steps every day, to fulfill whatever small or big goal I’m working toward. Organization is key, as they say, but sometimes even thorough planning does not seem to be sufficient in successfully accomplishing all you had planned on getting done.
On numerous occasions, I have found myself overwhelmed with workload and grew frustrated because I wasn’t able to finish all the goals I had set out to reach that day. You know, us humans, we don’t like to lose or feel like we have not done well. So not completing a daily to-do list (whenever it occurred) has always left somewhat of a bitter taste in my mouth. That’s why I decided to read more about productivity and time management, to step my game up. There had to be a way to do it all and I was determined to find it. While I have read many books on the topic, (and I still have a long list of books I want to read hanging on my iBooks library), I would like to share the top two game-changer works that have helped take my productivity to a whole other level.
The techniques mentioned in these books range from meditation to thorough planning, prioritizing, defining your goals, constantly improving your craft, tackling the important tasks when you have the most energy, increasing concentration, blocking all potential distractions like putting your phone in another room, making different lists for different goals, identifying the areas where you are weaker which are most likely to be the most important areas of your work and that you are most likely to procrastinate.
The ones that have stuck with me the most are:
– The 80/20 rule, which essentially says that 20% of your efforts produce 80% of your results. So identify the top three areas where you are most successful at and give these all of your time, energy and attention.
– Whatever you start working on, focus all your energy on successfully completing it and don’t stop until you finish. Don’t get up to eat, don’t check your emails or social media pages, don’t do anything that may distract you from finishing your task at hand. Studies have shown that it takes up to 25 minutes to be able to fully focus again after being distracted. That is way too much time wasted.
– In his book, Chris Bailey explains the difference between the limbic system (brain area that rules emotions) and prefrontal cortex (brain area that rules decision making, logical thinking and reason). Whenever you decide to do something you enjoy instead of accomplishing a task that you don’t feel like doing, your limbic system wins over your prefrontal cortex. When you discipline yourself to tackle difficult tasks whether you feel like it or not, your prefrontal cortex wins over your limbic system. In order to be productive, you may have guessed that your prefrontal cortex has to be stronger than your limbic system. (This was ground-breaking to me. Because I have frequently had conversations about feminism with many people and while we always agreed on the fact that women were emotional beings, I have always blamed it on our education. But reading this gave me a scientific explanation of why we almost always act upon our emotions.) Anyhow. Every time you decide to sit on your sofa and eat a bag of potato chips instead of going to the gym, your limbic system wins. Every time you decide to scroll your Instagram page instead of working on an important task, you give your limbic system candy. Anytime you move past your feelings, emotions and desires to do what’s right, although difficult, your prefrontal cortex wins and you get closer to your goals.
– Identify the key areas where you are strong, where you excel and work toward improving them. Determine the area(s) where you are not as good. Areas where, if you improved, would take your work, your life and/or your business to the next level. And commit to get better at it. Everything is learnable.
I used to think: “It’s normal to not be great at everything. We all have strengths and weaknesses.” Well, Darling, you can be great at everything. There is no skill that cannot be learned and mastered, provided you are willing to dedicated some time and effort to learn, improve and practice.
– Lay out each of your major goal by priority.
There are other gems of advice in these books, but I’ll leave it at that for the purpose of this post. If you are interested in getting more done, feeling more accomplished than ever, I highly recommend purchasing these two books that I have linked below.
To finish this post, I’d like to share a quote from Brian Tracy in his book Eat That Frog:
“See yourself as a role model for others. Raise the bar on yourself. The standards you set for your own work and behaviour should be higher than anyone else could set for you.
Your self-esteem, the core of your personality, has been defined by psychologist Nathaniel Brandon as ‘your reputation with yourself’. You build up your reputation with yourself with everything you do, or fail to do. The good news is that you feel better about yourself whenever you push yourself to do your best. You increase your own self-esteem whenever you go beyond where the average person would normally quit.“
