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 "Every day we get 24 hours to live our lives in a meaningful way. But once you account for all the obligations each of us have, there really isn't much time left; a paltry 2½ hour for most of us, to be exact. Productivity is also the difference between having no time or energy left at the end of the day and having a ton of time and energy left over to invest however you want." This is an excerpt from Author Chris Bailey's renowned book "The Productivity Project".
In today's world, there is only 1 answer:
"Productivity is = Accomplishment"
And to manage it, you need to manage your TEA (Time-Energy-Attention). How would you manage your TEA? A good sleep consumes Time, but it frees up Energy. Spend time to remove distractions, it frees up your 'Attention.' Changing your mind-set consumes a lot of energy & focus, but it frees up Time for you to do meaningful things. So Manage your Time, Energy and Attention and you have your 'Accomplishment' i.e. Productivity.
Laying the groundwork for productivity
Productivity is not an overnight thing. You need to do some groundwork to become productive. Let us look at some myths of productivity. Myth 1: Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy-wealthy and wise? Not necessarily. Human beings are complex, everyone is 'wired' differently. Some are productive in the morning, some in the night. What matters is accomplishment. Myth 2: Can you be productive just because someone told you? No. Unless your goals are deeply connected with your psyche, no force can drive you. There is only one force, your Values - religious values, social values or professional values. Once your goals are connected to your values you deeply cherish, you are on your path to Accomplishment.
Are all tasks equal? No. At least we have a proven theory by Mr. Pareto. Yes, the 80-20 Principle. 80% achievement can come from just 20% High Impact Tasks (HITs). You only need to identify these 20%.
Our life is generally governed by the Power of 3. The power of 3 gives you a guiding light, simplifies your efforts, removes complexity and encourages innovation. Break your laundry list of 100 tasks into combination of 3s. Identity 3 compelling outcomes you want to achieve in a day/week or a month. Just ensure the 3s are not too small, not too big, just right sized. Also the 3s should be challenging enough that does not hurt your motivations levels. And you have enough TEA to deal with them.
Biological Prime Time
There are times in a day when your body is full of energy, and these time zones are called Biological Prime Time (BPT). If you schedule your 20% HITs on these time zones, the results can be magical. However, you need to spot these BPT zones for better results, and you can do so by tracking your energy fluctuations for a period of 2-3 weeks or so. These insights, if applied, can be incredible.
Procrastination
The research says that our brain is divided into two parts - the left part recognizes instant pleasures, fears, rewards and the right part deals with long complex tasks that requires planning and future actions. When the 'left' part overpowers, you tend to procrastinate. Because you do not find instant pleasure, reward or fun or just get scared then you 'Delay,' or 'Procrastinate.' When the right part overpowers, you stay committed, work hard, show dedication and attain 'Accomplishment.' To handle procrastination, add left-brain attributes to the right-brain tasks. In other words, make your longer, complex tasks more pleasurable, interesting and structured, set some rewards for yourself, and your left-brain starts helping the right-brain to achieve tasks.
End of Time Management
In these time, it is said Time Management has ended. How? Time was being tracked by using the sun's position in pre-historic days. During Industrial Revolution, productivity was Time and Time was money. Today, it is time, energy, attention, social life, fun and at the end of the day 'Accomplishment' has become money. Hence, time management has ended.
Do more with less
Today, every Manager says 'Do more with Less' but how? By working countless hours, without breaks? That would hurt your energy & attention badly. As the day passes, energy & attention depletes faster than you think. Break the tasks into small time pieces and then do them. Smaller the time, higher the energy and higher focus levels.
Cleaning the house
When you set 20% HITs and spend 80% of your time doing them, what happens to the rest of the 80% tasks you cannot do away with? Set a maintenance day and chunk them together. On the other side, when you set 80% of your time to do 20% HITs, you also need to make sure that you are not distracted by unwarranted things. To remain focused and attentive at 100% levels, one needs to remove the cobwebs of unimportant or low impact tasks. You can do that by 1) eliminating some straightway 2) shrink time spent on them severely and 3) delegate wherever possible. Sometimes it is also OK to say No to certain things. When you remove these obstacles you can truly experience a Zen-like/meditative state to immerse yourself into your 20% HITs.
Quiet your mind
Our brain is to generate ideas, solve problems, not to choke it up with mindless clutter. There are thousands of things we still carry in our heads. Unless you remove this clutter from your mind, there will be no peace, no attention and no focus. Take these things out of your head and on a piece of paper - a To-Do List. Psychologically, once you write down things, they come out of your head because there is no fear of forgetting them as they are written somewhere to refer back to. Empty your brain, Quiet your Mind!!!
We are always surrounded by the daily whirlwind of activities. However, it is important to step back, review and make course corrections and then surge ahead. A bird's eye view is crucial. Make it a ritual, preferably a weekly ritual. The most productive people 'rise-up' by doing weekly course corrections and gradually get better at everything.
Gone are the days when time was money. Today, accomplishment is money but that does not come without Creativity. Today, one needs to be smart to get things done the smarter way. Creativity originates in a free day-dreaming mind. Hence, it is important to let your mind wander at times, day dream and think of abstracts and then use your 'right-brain' to action upon ideas. Make room in your mind to do both creative thinking as well as to act upon them.
Build your Attention Muscle
So many times we are neck deep into our activities, well on our path to accomplishment, but there comes an unwarranted notification, distraction or a disturbance. Disable all these so that they do not hijack your attention. Keep distractions 20 seconds away because psychologically when it takes longer than 20 seconds to pick up something, your mind won't do it.
The most powerful technique of attention building is 'Single-Tasking.' Please note that multi-tasking is not cool; it creates errors, stress, consumes time, is boring, depressing and it affects memory. Single-Tasking is equal to mindfulness. However, you cannot spend lots of time doing just one thing. Break the tasks and time into small pieces. The Pomodoro techniques says - work for 25 minutes take a 5 minute break. Do this for 3-4 times, then increase the break to 10 minutes and then to 15 minutes. For example, in the sunlight, if you focus a magnifying glass on a piece of paper for a few seconds, the paper starts burning. That's the power of Focus - killing the tasks faster and better and with no ash left.
Taking Productivity to next level
Refueling is as important as doing things in a focused manner. There are no substitutes to real food, water and physical fitness to generate and maintain energy levels. Real food cannot be substituted with processed fast food. Unprocessed natural food gives a steady drip of energy throughout the day. Exercise & body fitness helps to maintain blood flow, mental strength and fights fatigue & stress. Hence, eat-drink-sleep enough to ensure that you are refueled and energized.
Finally, it is said that happier minds are 31% more productive. Good breaks in between keep you steadily energetic & attentive. Write down at least 1 positive thing that happened to you in a day. Reflect to check if you are getting closer to your goal each day. Also, reward yourself for the hard work and/or achievement and make a list of your accomplishments.
Bailey turned down lucrative job offers to pursue a lifelong dream into the pursuit of productivity, a subject he had enamored with since he was a teenager. After obtaining his business degree, he created a blog to chronicle a year-long series of productivity experiments he conducted on himself. While some of the tactics in this book are on the easier side, most of them take more time, attention and energy.
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