If you are like me, you wake up every morning with great intentions of what you want to accomplish for the day. You head to the office, open the computer, and two hours later, you haven’t accomplished much of your goals for the day let alone your year.
I struggle constantly with being productive. I am bombarded all the time with time sucks and distractions. With my finite time, I HAVE to be productive or stuff just doesn’t get done, and that’s bad. As you know I read a lot, and one of my favorite books besides Getting Things Done by David Allen, is 18 Minutes- Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done by Peter Bregman .
In 18 Minutes, Bregman has several key suggestions that have helped me, and I think they can help you as well. Here are the major 3 for daily productivity.
STEP 1 (5 Minutes) Set Plan for Day.
Before turning on your computer, sit down with a blank piece of paper and decide what will make this day highly successful. What can you realistically accomplish that will further your goals and allow you to leave at the end of the day feeling like you’ve been productive and successful? Write those things down.
STEP 2 (1 minute every hour) Refocus.
Set your watch, phone, or computer to ring every hour. When it rings, take a deep breath, look at your list and ask yourself if you spent your last hour productively. Then look at your calendar and deliberately recommit to how you are going to use the next hour. Manage your day hour by hour. Don’t let the hours manage you.
STEP 3 (5 minutes) Review.
Shut off your computer and review your day. What worked? Where did you focus? Where did you get distracted? What did you learn that will help you be more productive tomorrow?
I practice these things regularly and they are enormously helpful in keeping me on track. What do you do to stay productive?
