When was the last time you were able to check off every item on your to-do list? Have you ever felt the sense of relief and achievement that comes after completing an entire list? Or, are you guilty of adding things onto your already-long-list, inevitably creating a behemoth of unfinished tasks?
Most people collect things to do; they arrange and re-arrange their priorities to get the new and more urgent tasks done, while neglecting older, now less-important tasks to collect dust in a dark corner of their desktops, and then they wish for more hours in a day to be able to complete everything.
How counterproductive is that? It’s like living on credit while trying to save money!
Your to-do list should be used as a tool to help you accomplish your tasks, not as a half-baked source of overwhelm.
How to stay calm, collected, and consistently productive
Productivity is a skill to be honed. Highly productive people practice good habits that enable them to navigate through their daily responsibilities with ease. They understand the importance of setting clear goals, prioritising tasks, and staying focused on what truly matters. They also make an effort to recognise where resistance exists, and proactively craft ways to avoid or overcome these moments of distraction, interruption, procrastination and work-related stress.
When you commit to excellence, intelligent planning and decision-making, as well as focused effort, you are creating a space for productivity to thrive. By becoming a master of your workflow, you can tackle challenges head-on, knowing that your time and energy are being utilised efficiently.
Here’s a few things to remember to help you stay calm, collected, and consistently productive:
Be wary of the state of busy
Graham Allcott, author of global bestseller, ‘The Productivity Ninja’, believes that busy is the enemy, holding us back from doing intentional and productive work. “We often equate busyness with success and productivity. If you’re busy, it’s assumed you’re in demand, you’re achieving things, you’re important. It’s a status symbol, a badge of honour. But being busy doesn’t necessarily mean being productive. It’s about doing the right things, not just doing more things.”
The state of busy stops you from:
- Seeing the bigger picture, resulting in missed opportunities and overlooking easy wins.
- Producing quality work, i.e., when you’re not well-rested, you diminish your focus hours.
- Adding value. When you’re in a constant state of busyness, you can’t fully comprehend The Pareto Principle.
Be productive, not busy. One way to achieve this is by making sure you capture everything, and create a system for how you enter tasks into your to-do list so that you can maintain organisation without needing to always shift priorities. You can use a tool like Todoist to help you.
Remember, if everything is urgent then nothing is urgent. Use the 4Ds Productivity Framework to help you review your to-do list. It stands for Do, Delegate, Defer, and Dump. Keep the tasks that you can do yourself, delegate the tasks that can be done by someone else, defer non-urgent tasks to complete it another time, and delete the unnecessary and unproductive tasks from your list.
It may be difficult to decide which tasks can be deleted; consider time-consuming tasks that can be improved or for which the frequency can be reduced without negatively altering its impact.
Attention invested > time spent
Allcott argues that your attention is a more limited resource than your time.
Managing your attention well, rather than your time, has a far-reaching positive effect on productivity. This is because on any given day, you have varying levels of attention and energy:
- Proactive Attention: Is the 2-3 hours in a day where you have the highest energy and ability to do your best work. You need to be ruthless with these hours to protect it because this is the time that you should be getting your most important work done, such as key decisions, writing, and attending critical meetings.
- Inactive Attention: Is the few hours a day where you’re struggling to concentrate. During this time, you should probably complete your menial tasks, such as filing, printing, and cleaning up your inbox.
- Active Attention: Is the hours in between when you are moderately attentive. In these hours, you’re more likely to be distracted, less brilliant, and sloppy. Don’t try to be great in these hours. Instead, focus on tasks such as day-to-day decisions, scheduling, and research.
Don’t chase deadlines. The reason you go into a state of hyper-focus when deadlines are looming is because you’re forced to. This leads to you feeling burnt out, rather than a sense of accomplishment. Give yourself clarity and perspective – By identifying the peaks and troughs in your energy levels, you can schedule tasks more effectively, and you don’t have to wait for a deadline to be productive.
Multitasking is an illusion
I want you to try this challenge. With your fists facing each other, put your index finger out on one hand and your pinky finger out on the other. Now, keep switching them.
That wasn’t as easy as it looked, was it?
Your brain can rapidly switch between tasks, but it isn’t designed to focus on more than one task simultaneously. Oftentimes, when you multitask, you’re actually exhausting your mental reserves, reducing the quality of work you’re able to produce.
There is probably a version of your CV that lists multitasking as a skill. That’s a default mindset. When you multitask, you’re really just playing tug-of-war with your focus.
When it comes to completing tasks, you need to think ‘divide and conquer’. To maintain high levels of productivity, do one thing at a time; focus on monotasking. With this approach, you allow yourself to tap into a deeper level of concentration, thus enabling you to:
- Reduce your vulnerability to distraction and errors.
- Increase your efficiency at completing tasks.
- Quiet chaos and explore creative thinking.
Mastering productivity is essential for anyone looking to thrive in today’s fast-paced and tech-distracted world. By adopting the habits and mindset of highly productive individuals, you give yourself an increased sense of control.
Draw on the metaphor of a ninja to conquer your workday with stealth and skill, and finally start checking off things from your to-do list.
Your attention and your time are two of the most important assets in your business. Speak to a business coach today to get the clarity you need to identify the high-impact activities you should focus on.
Next steps…
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