There is, of course, always someone who can tell you what you need to do to be more productive and successful. Someone like New Yorker Anthony Pompliano who, one day in June 2018, tweeted a list of nine things that, he said, ‘the most successful people’ do. Here's his list:
He got some amusing responses. Here's one from @TechnicallyRon.
The most successful people I've met:
If you're keen to be more productive, you've probably come across plenty of conflicting advice or hacks that are touted as being the secrets that can set you on the road to success.
But what works for one person may not be the best strategy for someone else. Being productive involves finding your own rhythm and getting things done in a way that works best for you; according to your circumstances; your skills and abilities; and the time, energy, and resources you have. Though it can be helpful to get ideas from others who have a knack for getting things done, when it comes to your own productivity, the smartest thing you can do is to learn what works best for you.
‘No one is you and that is your power.’
Dave Grohl
You might marvel at how much productive people seem to get done; they appear to be able to fit more into their day than you thought was possible. But what you'll find is that they've set things up to succeed according to their skills, strengths, and abilities; their resources, interests, commitments, and obligations. And rather than working harder, they're working smarter.
You can do the same.
In Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, Alice has the following conversation with the Cheshire Cat:
When it comes to being productive, if, like Alice, you don't know what, exactly, it is that you're trying to achieve, you could well end up just about anywhere and spend a long time getting there!
Do you want to be more productive at work or study? Perhaps you want to be more productive at home: with housework, decluttering, or decorating. Maybe you'd like to be more productive with a creative activity: writing a novel, painting or drawing, or learning a new skill – a language or a musical instrument. Maybe you want to achieve more in terms of health and exercise? Perhaps you want to train to run a marathon?
Whatever area or areas of your life that you want to be more productive in, you'll need to have an idea of how much you want to get done and by when.
These goals, for example have no measures or time frames:
In contrast, these goals show how much each person wants to get done and by when.
Knowing how much you want to get done and by when can help structure and focus your efforts. But how do you know if what you're aiming for is reasonable and realistic? Realistic goals are achievable, they're based on what's practical – within your capabilities and resources – not based on what you wish you could do.
You can begin to see how achievable and realistic your goal is by identifying where you are now in relation to where you want to be.
If, for example, you wanted to get 10 new clients in the next year, you'd need to identify the rate at which you're currently securing new clients. If you want to run a half marathon by April, how far can you run right now? How long until the date of the half marathon? If you want to write a book of 10 short stories in a year, how much do you currently write in any one day or week? And if you want to declutter one room in your home every month, how well have you been able to do that in the past?
Once you've identified the gap between where you're at and where you want to be, you can further identify how realistic and achievable your goal is by breaking it down into steps. Ten new clients, for example, averages out at one new client every five weeks. Is that realistic?
Next, think about and identify your options: the different possible ways you could work towards your goal.
If, for example, you wanted to write a novel, in order to find the time you might see that you have two options: you could either give up your fulltime job, write in the day, and do a bar job in the evenings and weekends; or you could keep your job, get up early, write for an hour or two before work, and write in the evenings and weekends.
What are the possibilities? Identify all the different means and methods you could use to reach your goal. What skills, strengths, and resources do you have that could help you? (Look back at Chapter 2.) Do you need further information, advice or help? Who could help you? There's more than one way to do things. By identifying a Plan A and a Plan B you can adjust your approach if one strategy isn't working.
Once you're clear about what it is you want to get done, have a realistic idea of how much and by when, and have identified your options and which option you'll take, the next thing to do is to plan how and when you'll do it.
Start by writing down what there is to do. Whether it's your work or home life or both, think of everything you've got going on in a typical day and week. Write it down. And if it's one specific project that you want to focus on – decorating or renovating your home, for example, starting your own business or increasing the number of clients you have – write down everything involved in that project or aspect of your life. Don't worry about writing things down in any order. Just empty your mind of all the things you can think of that you want to do, have to do, and need to do.
Once you've got everything written down, you've got yourself a ‘to‐do’ list.
Unfortunately, though, what often happens is that you get so overwhelmed seeing everything on your list you just don't know where to start. You feel daunted, disillusioned, and discouraged. Seeing what you ‘should’ get done and ‘ought’ to do, what you didn't get done, and what you've yet to do, only makes you feel like you're not doing enough. (You are doing enough; you're just not doing it efficiently!)
Writing a list is a good start. But it's just one step on the road to getting things done.
You may have been told this before – but no matter how many times you hear it, it's still true: you need to plan and prioritize. Planning means clearly identifying how and when you will do each task or step of a task. Prioritizing involves identifying the order for dealing with tasks according to their relative importance.
But although the need to plan and prioritize might be an obvious truth, remember that what's also true is that, as with all other aspects of being productive, you need to plan and prioritize according to your circumstances, your skills and abilities, and the time, energy, and resources you have.
So, where to start? What to do first? What's important? What's not important? What's a priority?
No doubt there are things you don't want to do but need to do; and things you want to do and need to do.
There are probably things you want to do but actually don't need to do. And there are things you don't want to do and don't need to do. Some things are urgent. Some things are important. And some things are urgent and important.
US President Dwight D. Eisenhower once said: ‘What's important is seldom urgent and what's urgent is seldom important.’ What did he mean by this? Simply that by attending to what's important, things rarely become urgent.
When things become urgent, they also become important; they become urgent and important tasks.
Urgent and important tasks are the things that shout ‘Do it now’! So, often, they're the things you have to do because you've left them to the last minute and there will be consequences if you don't deal with them immediately. Typically, urgent important tasks are the things with deadlines: essays and reports, job and visa applications, tax returns, passport and insurance renewals. Getting the car serviced or the MOT done and getting dinner on the table.
If you spend too much time on urgent things, it's like you're chasing cows instead of building fences; you don't have much time to spend on the important things, the tasks that really could make a difference and help you avoid the urgent things becoming an issue.
By spending time identifying and planning the important things, you can prevent problems that, if not dealt with now, may become urgent tasks – even crises – in future. It's not just the big projects, it can be the most straightforward, everyday things too. Things like the time spent queuing in your lunch hour for a stamp for the card for your grandmother's 90th birthday tomorrow. Or urgent dental work that you have to get done because you didn't bother going for a check‐up for ages. Now you're in pain and have to take time off to get your teeth fixed. Or the time and money spent on getting the boiler fixed because you didn't get it serviced. Or, as used to happen to me when my children were of school age, the stressful time I spent in a crowded shoe shop the week before term started again. All these things are important, but because they got put off, they became urgent!
Of course, it's not always easy to get motivated to do something if there's no deadline looming over your head. Even though they might, in the long run, be important, those tasks aren't pressing, so it's easy to keep them on the back burner and tell yourself that you will get to those things at some point. You can find out ways to overcome procrastination in Chapter 4, but in the meantime, know that if you don't prioritize and plan the important things you'll always be chasing cows instead of building fences.
When you spend time planning and working on important – but not urgent – tasks, you can prevent and eliminate many of the crises and problems that come with the urgent tasks. You'll feel more in control and therefore be able to be more productive.
So, what's important?
You might have heard of Pareto's Principle: the 80/20 law. The 80/20 law – the law of the vital few – refers to the observation that most things in life are not distributed evenly. The Pareto Principle can be applied to being productive in a couple of ways. It could be, for example, that 80% of your efforts are only achieving 20% of what you want to get done. Looking at it another way, if you have a list of ten things do, only two of those tasks – 20% – will be important, but you busy yourself instead with the eight least important – the 80% that contributes very little to you getting things done.
So, what can you do in order to apply the 80/20 rule in a way that will get things done effectively and efficiently? You can identify what, on your list, is and isn't important. Two things are important: first, what you have to get done – your obligations and commitments; second – what you want to get done – the things you want to be productive with.
Once you've identified what's important – what you want to achieve – look at your to‐do list and decide which tasks help you make progress on meaningful work. Ask yourself: ‘Is this task in the top 20% – what's important – or in the bottom 80%?’
‘Planning's not just sensible, it's the rope that guides you through the wilderness.’
Emma Donoghue
A study by professors Veronika Brandstätter and Peter Gollwitzer published in 1997 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology shows that scheduling what needs doing makes it much more likely that things will get done. Brandstätter and Gollwitzer found that ‘difficult goal intentions were completed about three times more often when participants had furnished them with implementation intentions’.
What that means in plain English is that you're more likely to do something if you identify when, exactly, you're going to do it.
You've probably experienced something being more likely to happen when you schedule it in your social life. You bump into someone you haven't seen for a while and, after a brief chat, as you're about to go your separate ways, you say to each other ‘we must get together some time’. Most likely, nothing happens. If though, right there and then, you actually set a date and a time to meet up in the future, it's much more likely that you will meet up.
Quite simply, that which is scheduled actually gets done.
So, what to schedule: what to do and when to do it? Look at your list. You might want to schedule the important things on your list first or you might want to knock out a bunch of small tasks first.
The American writer Mark Twain suggested that ‘If it's your job to eat a frog, it's best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it's your job to eat two frogs, it's best to eat the biggest one first.’ The frog is that one thing you have on your to‐do list that you can't face doing and that you're most likely to put off. ‘Eating the frog’ means you just do it. The idea is that once the frog is eaten – once the biggest, ugliest, hardest task is done – everything else you plan on doing the rest of the day will be easy.
There's a couple of reasons why this advice might not be right for you. To begin with, the biggest task might be so daunting and unappealing that the prospect of dealing with it puts you off from doing anything useful at all. You can't even face a small frog! Perhaps you'd prefer to start your day with some easy things to do. If you're able to knock off several easy tasks first – one right after another – you may well feel ready to tackle the harder tasks.
Often, the main hurdle is just getting started. What could be called ‘constructive procrastination’ eases this difficulty because working on easy tasks requires less mental or physical commitment than tackling difficult tasks first. So, if for you one of the challenges to productivity is simply getting going, it makes sense to save the difficult tasks for when you're in more of a groove.
In fact, small measures of progress can help to kickstart momentum and make it more likely that you will move on to the harder tasks. If you can successfully get a few relatively unimportant things done, your day then develops a slant of productivity; of efficiency and effectiveness. You might also find that getting some urgent tasks done and off your to‐do list frees you to think clearly about the bigger stuff.
Getting started with the easy stuff, getting some quick wins and feeling good about your progress, means it's easier to build momentum. In contrast, ‘eating the frog’ – feeling that you ‘should’ start with the difficult tasks that you don't want to do – means that you set yourself up for a stressful start. Lots of people aren't at their best at the beginning of the day. Like them, you might need to ease into the workday; do some mundane chores first. If this is you, resolving to do your most difficult tasks first would be a mistake.
It might be that when you start with the hardest tasks first, you drain physical and mental energy. Then you're flagging but still looking at a handful of small jobs on your to‐do list. Now what could've been easy becomes hard!
For many people, maximum productivity hours do occur in the morning, but this isn't true for everyone.
It all very much depends on your optimum times of day; the times in the day when your physical and mental energy and concentration levels are at their best; when you have the most physical and mental energy for different types of tasks.
Some tasks – for example, researching, reading, writing bids and reports, or filling in forms – need all your focus and concentration. However, it's not a good use of time and energy if you try to do these things at a time of day when you're not at your best. Attempt a task when you're unable to concentrate and the law of diminishing returns kicks in: each minute of effort produces fewer and fewer results. It's difficult to be focused and engaged and you're more likely to be easily distracted.
On the other hand, getting things done at your most optimum time of day will take less effort and energy because it's easier for you to focus and concentrate on what's happening and what needs doing.
Think about whether you're a morning, afternoon, or evening person. If you're not sure, try out different times of day and different amounts of time on various activities to see when you have the most mental and physical energy.
Identify what sort of jobs or activities you can only spend a short time on. Are you easily bored or distracted by some tasks? Probably best to plan to do them when your ability to focus is at its highest: at your optimum time of day.
Of course, your circumstances may not allow you to choose when you do particular tasks or activities, so you'll have to be flexible and work out the best compromise possible. If your best time of day is in the morning, but you have other commitments that prevent you from using your optimum time for work that needs concentration and focus, if possible negotiate with your manager or colleagues to free up some of your optimum time.
Once you know which hours are less productive for you, you can plan and schedule easy, mundane tasks for those times. And knowing which times of the day are not your most productive can help you stop feeling guilty, because you know it just isn't the best time for you to get work done.
Whether you want to be more productive at work or at home, on a specific project or aspect of your life, what tasks do you do every day? What tasks do you do every week? To be more productive, you need to create some efficient processes for handling those repetitive tasks. You need to create a routine – a set schedule for doing chores, tasks, and all the things you want to do or need to do most often.
The idea of routines may sound regimented, boring, and uninspiring, but they're a key element of being productive. Routines predetermine your schedule, allowing you to use your time efficiently. In fact, routines have several benefits.
When tasks and activities become routine, this reduces the chance that you'll put off doing them. When, for example, you brush your teeth each morning and evening, you hardly think about having to do it; you simply do it. You do it because it's routine; something you do so regularly it has become automatic. The same holds true for other tasks when you make them part of a routine; you don't waste time each day thinking about it and deciding what and when to do something. You just get on with it.
In an interview in 2012, President Obama told the magazine Vanity Fair ‘You'll see I wear only gray or blue suits. I'm trying to pare down decisions. I don't want to make decisions about what I'm eating or wearing because I have too many other decisions to make.’
It wasn't just what he wore each day that Obama routinized. Important issues requiring a decision from the President were submitted in writing (known as ‘decision memos’) with three check‐boxes at the bottom: ‘agree’, ‘disagree’, and ‘let's discuss’. ‘You need,’ he said in the interview, ‘to focus your decision‐making energy. You need to routinize yourself.’
If you always keep your things in the same place, you don't waste time and energy looking for them. If, for example, you always keep your car and house keys in the same place, you avoid the stress of having to find them because you always know where they are. It's the same principle for the things you need to do: if they're part of a routine you don't get stressed thinking about when you can do them; when you can fit them in. You already know that you have a set time to do them. And, if you've made certain tasks part of your routine, there's no risk of forgetting them; you know that they'll always get done.
When a task or set of tasks are routine, they become something you know you can do well. When other things are uncertain or out of control, routines provide an anchor of predictability and stability.
Routines provide structure, and also a logical sequence to your day and your week. A routine allows you to experience a flow to your day; things proceed continuously and smoothly. When you've completed one thing, you know what's next to do and you become more efficient as a result. Furthermore, because a task is routine, you become better at doing it because you do it regularly.
‘A good daily routine is a way of tackling whatever obstacles you have in your daily life’, says journalist and author Mason Currey. ‘It's taking stock of your commitments, temperament and goals, and devising a scheme that suits your project, your quirks and your personality.’
A few years ago, as a result of a particularly unproductive afternoon, Mason – author of dailyroutines.typepad.com (now a book: Daily Rituals: How Artists Work) – began looking on the internet for information about other writers' working schedules. He came across interviews, biographies, obituaries, and anecdotes about the working lives of a range of creatives – Freud, Beethoven, and Georgia O'Keeffe among others – and saw that a feature of their days and weeks was a set routine. Although the subjects of his research had structured their days with a routine to do their work (writers especially have two clear blocks of work, separated by a walk or an activity of some sort), Mason discovered that there is no one daily routine which works and can be recommended for everyone.
Mason writes that routines ‘can be a finely calibrated mechanism for taking advantage of a range of limited resources: time (the most limited resource of all) as well as will power, self discipline and optimism. A solid routine fosters a well worn groove for one's mental energies and helps stave off the tyranny of moods.’
In other words, routines can help you minimize or overcome difficulties such as lack of time and self‐discipline, distractions and interruptions, and maximize your opportunities to be creative and productive.
We each have to work it out for ourselves and devise routines that take into account the tasks we have, our circumstances and abilities, and the time, energy, and resources we have. Start with anything that has to be done at a certain time each day (like doing the school run or taking your lunch break). Then slot in tasks based on when it makes the most sense for you to do them.
Think about when the best time of day is for you to do things. And think about which tasks can be ‘batched’ together.
The idea behind batching is to identify similar tasks and plan to do them one at a time, in one timeframe.
You can work efficiently on several tasks without losing your flow if the activities require similar mindsets. Because the tasks are similar, they keep your attention and you stay focused.
To discover which tasks you can batch, look at all the things you've written down that you have to do in any one day or week. Now identify the ones that are similar and batch them together. You might, for example, batch all your communications – e‐mails, phone calls, and texts – and schedule them at a certain time or times of your day. So, instead of putting ‘Call back my sister’ or ‘Phone the client’ on your to‐do list, establish a recurring block of time each afternoon to return phone calls, texts, and e‐mails.
Are you constantly up and down, scanning or copying things? Make a folder and put things in it throughout the day, if you don't need something right away, so that you don't forget what you wanted to copy but you only do it once, all at one time.
And at home, you might batch together repairs, cleaning, and decluttering tasks for regular set times.
But batching isn't the only way to get lots of things done in a specific amount of time. In fact, ‘batching’ might not appeal to you because it involves doing a run of similar tasks and chores in one time period. You might be someone who prefers a change in the nature of each task. If that's the case, then you'll probably be more productive – more effective and efficient – if you get things done by ‘task switching’.
For example, you might not want to follow one meeting with another. You might want to follow a meeting with some time spent at your computer. Or you might not want to spend time writing a report and follow that with a similar task such as filling in an application form. Instead, you could follow the report writing with taking your turn to do the coffee run.
Whatever the tasks, the way to task switch effectively is to work on one task at a time but alternate between them.
In fact, whether you intend to batch tasks or task switch, the approach is the same: identify what, exactly, you're going to be doing; be clear about which tasks you're going to work on and know which task will follow on from the last. Once you're clear about the sequence of tasks and how much time you'll spend on each one, get started. Do one thing at a time. Do it mindfully and focus on it completely. Then move onto the next task or activity. Give that your full attention too. If you start thinking about the other tasks, remind yourself that you've already scheduled it in and pull yourself back to the task in hand.
But isn't all this batching and task switching just multitasking? No. It's single tasking. And that's the crucial thing: whether you batch tasks or switch tasks, you just focus on one thing at a time. Don't try to do two things at once.
Is it, though, possible to multitask: to do two things at the same time? Yes.
If you find it difficult to multitask it's probably because you're trying to do incompatible things at the same time. If, for example, you're surfing the web while talking on the phone, or writing an e‐mail while trying to watch a film, you're not going to be able to do either of them very well; your concentration isn't completely focused on any of the tasks. Reading at the same time as listening to someone talk is very difficult; they are too similar for your brain to manage both at once.
However, doing a physical task – such as making or mending – with a mental task – such as listening to music or listening to someone talking – is much more doable. So is rehearsing what you want to say in a presentation while you're washing dishes or ironing; and so is watching something on a screen while running on a treadmill.
The key to multitasking is to match tasks that are complementary rather than competitive. Matching tasks with other compatible tasks not only makes multitasking possible, but for some tasks it makes it more productive than single tasking.
Work out for yourself which mental tasks you can do at the same time as you're doing physical tasks and what the best time of day to do this is.
Batching, task switching, and multitasking: all three approaches can help streamline your day, making more things simpler and more efficient.
Of course, not everything needs to be scheduled or incorporated into a routine and you don't have to stick to it rigidly. Experiment. Have a go at multitasking. See if it's easier to task switch or to batch tasks together. Try out a new routine for a few days or a couple of weeks and see how it works for you. Do you need to adjust things? If something isn't working, change it. Just remain flexible and open to changing how you do things.
Obviously, there will always be urgent tasks that you couldn't have foreseen. You can't always predict or avoid some issues and crises. That's why, just like having savings to deal with unexpected financial issues, it's a good idea to plan for some time in your day and week to handle unexpected issues. Make some space. Don't plan things close together; instead, leave room between activities and tasks. That makes your time more flexible and leaves space in case some things take longer than you planned.
The Second World War leader and US President Dwight D. Eisenhower once said that in preparing for battle it's important to know that: ‘Plans are worthless, but planning is everything’. There's wisdom in this paradox. To better understand this, we need to see Eisenhower's comment in full. He says:
‘I tell this story to illustrate the truth of the statement I heard long ago in the Army: Plans are worthless, but planning is everything. There is a very great distinction because when you are planning for an emergency you must start with this one thing: the very definition of “emergency” is that it is unexpected, therefore it is not going to happen the way you are planning.’
Eisenhower is acknowledging that the outcomes of a plan do not reflect how things will eventually unfold.
So why plan at all if plans are worthless? He goes on to say: ‘So, the first thing you do is to take all the plans off the top shelf and throw them out the window and start once more. But if you haven't been planning you can't start to work, intelligently at least.’
It's true; no matter how much you plan, problems, setbacks, difficulties, and challenges happen. You then have to let go of your plans. And plan again.
Is this what happens when things become urgent? Yes. But the problem is, when things become urgent it's not easy to engage your brain so that you can make fresh plans. When there's too much to do and too little time to do it all it's easy to panic and think ‘I'm never going to be able to get this done in time!’ You feel anxious, frustrated, and stressed. It's impossible to think clearly. Why is that? It's all down to two specific areas of your brain: the amygdala and the neo cortex.
The neo cortex part of your brain is responsible for thinking, remembering, rationalizing, and reasoning. Focus and attention are primarily an activity of the neo cortex. The problem is, when you become stressed, the amygdala is triggered and it overwhelms the neo cortex. The amygdala in your brain is responsible for your emotions – emotions such as agitation, anxiety, and frustration which, when you're under pressure, can overwhelm your neo cortex and so prevent you from thinking rationally and reasonably.
But some people thrive and rise to the challenge of deadlines. How come? Because they just stay with what's happening now. They're completely focused. They don't allow the amygdala to take over; instead, they engage the neo cortex – the thinking, reasoning part of the brain.
You can do the same. Instead of letting yourself get stressed, recognize that there is only a certain amount of time available to get something done. Accept it. Then, once you've accepted the short amount of time you've got, you can engage the reasoning, thinking part of your brain and can think clearly and deliberately. Approaching a deadline in this way is taking a mindful approach: you simply focus on what you're doing right now, at the present time, instead of getting stressed by filling your mind with what you haven't done and what else you've got to do.
Even when things are urgent, you can still prioritize and plan what needs to be done. Don't, though, wait until you're in the middle of the first step to decide what else needs to be done to get things finished on time. Before you do anything, work out what's important; what tasks will contribute to meeting that deadline.
It's easier to get straight on to the next step if you have already planned what and how you are going to do it. It allows you to maintain a steady pace and keep the pace going. A step‐by‐step plan allows you to simply work consistently towards what it is you want to achieve; so that at any one point in the hour or the day, you're clear about what you are going to work on.
Then get started. Focus. Decide what the first thing you need to do is. Then do that one thing. Give it your full attention. Once that one thing is done, go on to the next step. Give that your full attention too. Keep your mind focused on one step at a time. Tell yourself, ‘This is what I'm going to do next’, and then just focus on that one step you're taking.
With this focused step‐by‐step approach, you can be deliberate and purposeful, not rushed and random. You set yourself up to meet the deadline by achieving small targets along the way and you see yourself moving forward.
No matter how little time you have, though, do try and take some breaks. Breaks give your mind space to digest, mentally process, and assimilate what's happening, what is working and what isn't, and to decide if you need to change anything.