Hello
I hope your weekend was good! Mine went by FAST. I worked all day Saturday just like a
normal day, and spent about half of yesterday brainstorming, researching, outlining, and planning for the next couple weeks. I think I had about 6 hours 'off'. Oh well. Better luck next time!
**Disclaimer: This email is a long one. Only read right now if you have had your first cup of coffee and are not currently
sitting in the drive-thru.. there won't be enough time!
Today I want to talk to you about productivity. I have some big goals, both in my professional and personal life. In order to achieve those goals, I have to increase my productivity even more than where it's at right now. I am actually pretty good at staying
productive, but these days I have been slacking off a little as far as just doing the bare minimum and not working hard to do more than that so I can get ahead.
And I don't know about you, but on the days where I know I got a ton done and marked every single thing off my to-do list, I feel so much better. It gives
me this amazing boost of energy and happiness that is hard to get any other time.
If you remember, I wrote this blog
post my rules for better productivity back in January. It is meant to express my 'real' personality, so it's partly funny, partly serious. Maybe a tad sarcastic :P But it does represent a lot of the things I do in my daily life to stay on top of things.
Lately, I have boosted my productivity using some of
these tips, and some other things I have picked up along the way.
1. I do my researching and outlining the night before. In that blog post, I talked about how I spent the first hour of the day prepping my writing work, then closing the browser so I can write. This definitely does help,
but what I have realized is that if I am going to write a lot, I need to do it right when my morning routine is over (more on that in a bit).
This means spending about an hour before bed to get my work for the following day all ready to go, whether it means researching a pack for the next day, writing a blog
post, or setting up an email. Then by the time my work time slot starts in the morning, I just start writing immediately. It helps SO much.
2. I still do time blocks. One thing that is definitely the same is working in time blocks, but they're a little different. I don't just see what I can do in a
certain period of time. Instead, I have figured out about how long each work task takes me, so I set a certain time block for each of those tasks. And I'm pretty specific about it. If I want to take my morning break at 10, and my work day starts at 8, then I figure out which of my tasks needs to be done first and will not take more than 2 hours. I get it done before my morning break, and then when my break is over, I'm ready to move on to the next thing.
3. I have started a new morning routine. Routines are everything to me, just like to-do lists. If I don't have my entire day planned out, I won't get anything done. This is how you feel like you have been working for 12 hours, and realistically gotten about 20 minutes of actual work done. I personally need a plan, or as much of one
as possible. So if someone calls me for last-minute lunch plans, forget it.
This was originally inspired by The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod. I am going to write another email and blog post about this another time
and tell you my personal 2 cents on it, but I have used some of his techniques and some of my own to create a morning routine that works well for me. Yours will probably be different. It just needs to be a good way to start the day off right, instead of falling out of bed in a state of chaos. That will follow you around all day.
So that's what I have been doing lately to help increase my productivity. Have any tips to add? I can definitely talk about this more if it is something you guys are interested in :)
Have a great week!
