My Five Productivity Habits

 

So, how many weeks do we have in our lifetime?  

Guess …  

Before you squeeze your brain too long or ask Google for help, that average number isn’t a million or even tens of thousands... assuming you live a long, healthy life, you can expect after near 90 orbits around the sun to have enjoyed roughly 4,680 weeks on Earth.  

Breaking that down a bit, by the time you are age 25, you will have used 1,300 of those weeks. Many of us are in the middle of our careers and lives. We have family, commitments, professions, and hobbies with more weeks under our collective belts than you did at 25 years... and there is no guarantee you will get to 90, as much as many of us hope to get there safely, securely and happily.  

From the perspective of limited time, how do we make each weeklong snapshot of our story mean the most to us? How do we make those individual periods the most productive they can be, which in turn allows us to feel engaged and happy in our day-to-day moments.  

In this digital era, we need to change our mindset since we are the only ones we can ultimately manage or control. We can use technology as a tool, instead of being a tool to the technology. We have become digiphernia, which is lost to digital information overload, splitting ourselves too much into too many different roles. In this mode, we cannot enjoy any one experience as we look and worry about the next. We have lost focus and priority for even simple tasks at hand, ultimately making ourselves feel burned out rather than accomplished. 

As I have gone through my journey, as a son, father, DBA, man of faith, man of habit, I have found these few habits can enhance productivity and they allow me to feel more focused in my daily routines. 

 

 

#1 Batch Processing of Emails.  

Most of us keep our emails open all the time. We have anxiety to process them and look to each individual interaction to achieve minor tasks with often minimal reward. According to a study done at the university of British Columbia checking email less frequently on a scheduled basis reduces stress and anxiety. 

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0747563214005810?via%3Dihub 

Email has become a business focused tool, running a wide array of major project updates, critical tasks, but more often smaller, rapid things that can pull from the bigger picture of your day. By creating scheduled email response periods, where that is your sole focus, you allow yourself the freedom to work on major projects and issues, which in turn could be part of your various electronic responses. Additionally, we still have other tools for urgent issues such as Teams, Slack, mobile phones and tried and true in-person conversation. Not all emails need to be responded to urgently, and the reality is we should all break the habit of urgent communication going over email.  

Putting a schedule around this type of activity could also have the auxiliary benefit of being more engaged with your colleagues, because the reality is sometimes a quick conversation can negate misunderstandings or even long, drawn out threads where people are often being added without really understanding what their purpose to the discussion is... so thinking of new ways to engage email, and in fact the way you communicate overall, could return valuable time and focus.  

 

#2 Write it down. 

When you are coming up with a plan or a need for next steps, sit down with a pen and paper and start to write.

The purpose isn’t to create a list of tasks to do, or even next steps. You may find it may end up that way, but the real goal at the beginning is to allow your mind to freely form ideas that otherwise could be lost. One idea can beget another, and freeflowing thought you’ve jotted down allows you to come back later, which can sometimes open doors to ideas or opportunities you may not have thought of at the time.  

 

#3 Turn off Notifications. 

Distraction is #1 killer for productivity. We may be working through an issue or writing down stream of conscious thought... and suddenly Facebook wants your attention. We can easily turn off or pause notifications in our smart phone or computers. Airplane mode is your friend for this step of the habit.  

Those dings and beeps from that device send a signal to the rewards center in our hypothalamus and consequently create a dopamine rush that leads to less favorable workplace productivity, and from there being less productive overall. See the previous step of the journey regarding in-person or other styles of communication for urgent needs. This is often the same effect; the notification is often a service or non-urgent event triggering you to engage it. You have the power to take control back, realizing if there is something urgent that involves your insight or presence, the sender shouldn’t expect your attention to solely be attainable through a cell phone ding.  

Prof.Robert Lustig has summarized the difference between Dopamine and Serotonin in his book “The hacking of American Mind". I have learned a lot from Dr.Lustig ( https://robertlustig.com/). 

 

 

 

#4 Defensive Calendaring  

By blocking certain segments of your calendar, you can plan and focus on an activity (NOTE: Singular Activity!). Human beings for all our abilities and talents and self-assessment, and truly not very good at multitasking, although many of us think we are. Context switching from task-to-task results in less productivity because we often rush to reach the end goal, doing each task as quickly as possible to go on to the next. On average, it takes 52 seconds to refocus from one task to the next, not counting what you may have eventually done with the original train of thought. 

As the saying from John Beckley goes “People don’t plan to fail; but they fail to plan”. Like corralling email into specific blocks of time, you can extend the concept to other aspects of your daily routines. Do you want to exercise? Then every day, you plan to at 5pm, or 5am. The time isn’t as relevant as the commitment to the schedule. That allows you to be clear and authentic with yourself as well as your colleagues that at specific periods or times, you may have commitments that matter to you, and you are both ensuring the time is available to meet your obligations. At the same time, guarding against other infringements that may creep randomly into your day.  

 

#5 Automate repetitive tasks. 

If there are any repetitive tasks you do throughout your week, they are the most likely automation candidates. This allows you to set routines throughout your day and even your week that repeat reliable, consistent results. 

This is where technology and habit can synthesize into a powerhouse of productivity for you. As an example, if you are responsible for generating a summary report for event registrations, and you can predict the timing of when the data is available, you can then use tools at your disposal such as Power Query to automate the output if the output is always the same. Additionally, this can extend out more even if the output needs superficially change, allowing the bulk of the processing to be done and then you simply modify the output. This is something AI will ultimately be beneficial and assistive with as we march into the future, but for the time being it is important to take stock of things you often repeat and do over with similar outcomes each time. Not only will you maybe save some time for your week-to-week schedule, but you’ll also have a predetermined candidate list of concepts and tasks that will be ready when AI becomes more ubiquitous around us.