Productive vs Active

Over the last weeks, I’ve been trying to be productive and focused. I managed to accomplish quite some things Being active is getting things done; being productive is getting the right things done.

I’ve been doing too many things, mainly in parallel. At work, I work on multiple tickets, help people, participate in chats, and do many other things. That’s a nice thing, nobody would want to get a simple reply hours later. But you should find a balance of how many interruptions you can handle or how many tasks you should do at once.

Even by writing this, currently, I stop, check my phone, go to the kitchen, browser something useless on the internet, etc. It’s being a challenge to focus and write for a couple of minutes without interruption.

By all that, I’d like to introduce some changes that will help me to improve the 24 hours I have daily.

Pomodoro

I’ll bring back the Pomodoro technique, making a reserved time of 25 minutes of focus work in a single task. When this Pomodoro is completed, I’ll make 5 minutes pause to do whatever I want and then move to the next Pomodoro.

80/20 rule

The Pareto principle states that 80% of the outcomes come from 20% of the effort. Have you ever tried to make a PowerPoint presentation where you can get most of it very fast, but spend a lot of time perfecting it? Focus on what matters, if your next day has 10 tasks focus on the ones that will give you the most outcome first, for this you ideally need to prepare your day in advance or think about it in the morning.

Eat the Frog first

We all have a couple of important tasks that need to be done daily, usually one of them is the harder one and we are tended to keep procrastinating until the time is over. When you tackle the hardest one first, ideally in the morning, you will get the sense of accomplishment and the rest will flow easier.

Keep distractions away

While working, remove the temptations you have, put your phone aside, close your browser and try to work in the non-disturbing environment. When that’s not possible an alternative would be to invest in some noise reduction headphones.

Limit the time

If you set a deadline for tasks, usually it will take this amount of time to accomplish it, but if you keep it without time constraints it can drag you for as long as it can. For this journaling routine, I envisioned spending 10 minutes on it, but over the days, I was spending 60 minutes in it. Was it worth it? One could question that. The same applies to big projects, if you don’t set a deadline you probably won’t finish it, but if you set a tight deadline, definitely you will work on what’s important in order to accomplish it. If you can’t hold your own word, find an accountability partner or publish on the web.

Action Points:

• Use Pomodoro to lock non-distracting periods
• Prepare the previous day what’s important to be done first
• Start the day by doing what’s the hardest
• Keep smartphone and social networks away
• Limit the time for tasks, 10 min for journaling