Process + Batch = Productive Life

 

Productivity is not about doing more. It’s about making better use of your time. So it’s about being effective. If you want to be effective about your productivity and your time, you should have a good system in place.

The following are tips that you can implement TODAY and they will help you immediately.

Give Yourself a Space to Get Organized

This is really about a consistency that you build. So space means giving yourself time to plan things, to organize things, to figure things out. You can’t expect to be “go-go-go” all the time — jam packing your schedule and expect to have extra time out of nowhere to organize your life. You will have to give yourself an allotted time. One way is to give yourself an “admin day” where you spend a couple of hours doing the general upkeep to keep your life organized ( take things off your calendar that are done or no longer needed, file important papers, answer non-urgent emails, plan your tasks for the following week). For me, a good day to do this is Sunday. It resets my state of mind and allows me to start the new week with a solid foundation.

Keep Things Out of Your Head

The average human can remember about seven things in their short-term memory. This means we cannot trust our short-term memory — I know I can’t. For this reason, it’s a good idea to get into the habit of “brain-dumping” everything that comes to mind. Write everything down — always take notes of the reminders and information. The Notes app is one of the easiest and most popular places to do this. You can worry about organizing it later.

Build a System You Can Trust

This may take more time and a lot of tweaking as you go. There are physical ways and digital ways to do this. You have to test things out and see what works best for you. For a to-do list you can use a notepad, sticky notes, a daily planner, or bullet journaling. For more complex tasks or project management, you can use apps like Trello or Todoist. For your calendar you can use Google Calendar or Fantastical or just your traditional analog calendar. My personal favorites are the Notes app on the phone and the Google calendar.

It’s important when you build your system that it is as accessible and flexible as possible for it to remain effective. If something is too complicated for you, you probably won’t keep it up. I personally like bullet journaling because it sparks my creativity.

Events vs. Tasks

Events are specific to timing and should go in your calendar because they happen at a specific time and you need to block out your calendar for them. Tasks are not necessarily things that require a specific timing so they need to go into your to-do list. There are certain times where tasks have a deadline so you want to schedule them in your calendar. Personally, I schedule tasks on my Google calendar using a different color from that of the events. This keeps everything in front of me every time I look at the calendar.

Batch Similar Tasks Together

I LOVE this one! When you switch from one task to another, you lose effectiveness because your brain takes time to recalibrate and prepare to do another task. You also lose efficiency just by preparing to do the physical things. Example: From writing an email to going out and doing an errand.

So the trick is to batch similar tasks together so that you stay in that flow. You can set a specific time when you’re going to do all your emails. Batch your errands together and do all the things you need to do when you’re out. Batch your planning together, batch writing together, batch your calls together, batch your meetings together — you get the drift.

Do the Most Important Tasks First

You have to get good at prioritizing what is most important for you. What would be the most impactful things that you need to get done today? This is difficult to do as we tend to do the easy things first.

The trap of doing the easy things first is that you make it hard for yourself to do the other things later in the day.

Process All of your “Life Inboxes” Regularly

This could mean your email inbox, your physical mail, or anything that tends to pile up on your desk. You want to have a system where you regularly check in to process this stuff. Otherwise it really builds up and you get overwhelmed and this leads to procrastination. Generally, you want to decide what items to archive, what items to save to deal with later, what items to “star” as important to deal with immediately, and what items that are quick to deal with that you can do at that moment.

Plan Your Day the Night Before

I love the feeling of waking up and seeing my to-do list ready and my important tasks ready to tackle. Setting some time to plan the night before can make all the difference in your day -and your life.