Productivity At Its Best

The latest buzzword in today’s workplace is all too common, one that we are way too familiar with – productivity. So what does productivity means to you? For many it’s about getting things done or GTD as we know it but for me, it means matching the effectiveness of the result(s) to the efficiency of the action(s) required. In many sports, we are accustomed to the notion that one gets better with practice at one’s own specialised sporting field. Let’s say we take swimming for example, it’s all about the practice of trying to shave one’s own timing to beat a personal record or to set a world record.

It’s no different at the workplace where we are trying daily to achieve a greater number of things within a tight allocated period of time and that requires full concentration without any means of distraction. Although it is okay to let one’s mind wander sometimes, to allow for creativity space, we often tend to take that for granted immensely but fully indulging in mind-wandering. And we would find it difficult to snap back into “reality”.

For whatever reasons one might be as tempted to “escape”, I would like to share with you some of my best productivity tips starting right from when I first get out of the bed (yup, you read that right).

 

Dawn

Do you make the bed when you first get out of it? If you don’t, maybe you should consider starting. A seemingly simply ritual of making one’s own bed after one has woken up will definitely inspire oneself to start the day on a productive note. It cements the sense of accomplishment within oneself and once again, you would already feel happier knowing that you’ve gotten the first thing right at the start of your day.

Morning Commute

If you’re like the rest of the others, and me, who travel to work in the morning, do take the commuting time to read a book and/or catch up on the news. Many successful people whom I know, have taken this time to catch up on their reading when their day demands full attention, leaving them with little or no time for their own. Even if you do not read, take this time to just silently meditate and you would have sharpened your mind to embrace the day’s demands.

Work

There are plenty of distractions ironically for the time when one should be holding full focus on their work at hand but fret not, here are some useful tools for you. Unless you’re a bank teller or telemarketer who is required to be on the phone or engaging customers all the time, I personally have stumbled across and love these websites that assist in your work productivity.

Focus@Will is a great music-inspired website that allows you to continue your work while you plug into the music for a period of time and while you can simply subscribe for free to the basic account, they have more paid options if you desire. Do check them out if you’re a classical music lover like me. 🙂

SimplyNoise and SimplyRain are both of the same but as their names suggest, you can choose to listen to either the different types of noises or rain music while you tap away at work (personally I am now using both Focus@Will and SimplyNoise for this blog post). SimplyNoise has 3 different types of noises that suit the different environment/occasion you desire – White, Pink & Brown – while SimplyRain allows all you rain lovers to choose the types of rainfall, ranging from light patter to heavy thunderstorms.

Dusk / Evening

Take some time to relax and chill with a quiet reflection of the day passed while giving yourself a great pat on the back for having such an awesome productive day! But not so fast! Before you slip into bed and hide under the covers, a great productive thing to do is to look and plan for the next day’s activities! Do you want to go to the gym? Pack your gym stuff before you go to bed and you will be inspired to hit the weights than to wake up and find your stuff in your morning stumble. Whatever you want to do for the following day, prep as much as you can so that you will not give yourself excuses not to.

 

And finally, being productive also means the ability to free up your time for whatever else you want to do than to play last-minute catch up. I personally have found it effective and efficient to establish such great habits that sustain my productivity daily. Let me know what works for you!

Being In The Present, Getting Things Done

If you’re constantly in the present, you will often get things done. This is not some hocus-pocus mojo stuff that I made up but think about it, really think about it. We are all living in a world where distractions are in abundance and we move from Miley Cyrus’ screen-shattering controversial nutty videos to Lindsay Lohan’s (possibly) publicised sex list much faster than we flip channels. So how does the connection work?

As with Buddhist zen philosophy, we have to be mindful of the present and be in the ever-present moment of mindfulness. Sounds like a mouthful but it’s actually true as great teachers like Eckhart Tolle and Deepak Chopra would say. I especially liked this interview that Eckhart Tolle did with Oprah so check it out if you want to find out more..

How often do we do things “for the sake of doing it”? We merely wash our hands just so we can sit down and have dinner, we merely take our showers just so we can be clean and the list just goes on. How many times have we noticed the sensation and pleasures when we rub the soap on our hands and feel the cleansing power of the water running through our fingers? Maybe you could start doing it because I did and it has helped in quite some unexpected ways.

You see, when you start being aware of the present and being mindful of the momentous present, you start sharpening your focus by being in the here and now. We are no longer in the past and we do not know the future but we are what we feel, see and hear in the present. What is important now? What requires my attention? What am I doing right now?

And that brings me to my next point – getting things done. Scientifically, it has been proven countless times that we are not multi-tasking creatures that the civil society has tried to demand out from us. We cannot cook and shower at the same time (okay, that’s a pretty corny thing but you get my point) but by focusing on one task at a time, we can henceforth complete the immediate task at hand before moving on to the next big thing.

We can plan and prioritise our time but only by focusing on the here and now, by focusing on the task at hand that we want to do, that we can truly get things done and hence sharpen our focus with practice. It’s all always about practice isn’t it?

What’re your priorities? What do you want to achieve NOW? Right now, I’m just letting my fingers translate my thoughts and I’ve absolutely no hurry to want to finish this writing whatsoever. Period.

Some of you may ask, “what about procrastination?” That is another topic my fellow seekers and I’m no stranger to Mr. P but I shall leave that to another post soon. So if you really want to get things done, forget all those lists you’ve to pen and the fancy apps you have to download (because I became a hoarder of lists and apps instead of really getting down to doing what I have to do).

Step 1

Be mindful of your situation, environment and just use simple tools like a pen and paper to write down the time, date and plans/tasks.

Step 2

Take in a deep breath and just take 10-15 seconds to mentally note down your tasks

Step 3

Decide what you want to do now or what needs to be done first

Step 4

Action on it

Step 5 (Bonus Tip)

Our concentration and focus limitation is often 15 – 45 minutes on average so schedule yourself to complete that task within timeframe if possible. Otherwise just take a quick breather, take note of your present moment again and continue your task. Do not allow yourself to drift away from the task at hand for more than 7 minutes.

 

*If you’re at work and this seems impossible, inform your colleague/boss and ask them if it’s truly important (many would say yes) but get them to repeat their demand(s) again and inform them of what you’re doing at hand and asks if they would be comfortable with you starting on it later. Many would not hesitate to give you space and time, knowing that their tasks will be next on your list. You may have probably gained yourself time and even respect.

Rinse and repeat on a daily basis, you can be a GTD guru.