6 methods to maximize efficiency and stop being overwhelmed today
As part of a three articles serie on personal productivity, I published last week an article on how to maximize effectiveness. Effectiveness is about making sure you work on the right things.
Now, how do you make sure that you’re doing them in the most efficient manner and avoid looking like this person above?
1/ Get in control of your to do list
This is pretty obvious, but it took me some time before getting there. Let’s take a step back. What’s a to do list?
Here, I’ll paraphrase David Allen, the author of Getting Things Done, who said you want to capture all the things that might need to get done or have usefulness for you in a logical and trusted system outside your head and off your mind.
To me that’s very important, that prevents you from always have that thing you need to do in your mind. Once it’s on your to do list and you trust it, you know it’ll get done at the right moment and you can free your mind from this task.
Now, we all have made a to do list at some point that then gets totally out of control. At least that’s what happened to me for years. How do you avoid that? Discipline.
a) Capturing thoughts on the spot
I believe a big driver of stress is when you have something to do, are afraid of forgetting it or are not sure when you’ll do it. You basically feel like this:
This is Rule #1 of a good to do list, everything needs to be there. As soon as there’s something you know you need to do, write it down. It takes 2 seconds to write on your notebook or your to do list app. DO IT. You don’t have to think exactly how and when you’ll get it done right now.
Having a good system to capture your thoughts is a bit like the pensieve in Harry Potter, you get to remove things from your brain, preventing them from stressing you out while still being able to access them when you need it. (HP geek right here!)
My system to capture thoughts is actually very low tech, a notebook. I always have it with me and I write down everything that I think might need to be done at some point, without specifying much.
b) Clarifying your to do list items and organizing it.
This is something you should do everyday. Review the items you’ve captured in your do list and specify them further. This is the time to think about exactly what needs to be done and what outcome is expected of the task. I do that every day, and my thoughts go from rough in my notebook to specific in my to do list app.
For example, “writing an article for the blog” is too large of a task, you need to break it down:
- Choosing a topic for the blog’s article
- Doing research on the topic (this should be even broken down further once the topic is chosen)
- Write Article
- Publish Article
- Promote article
This will help you understand two things
- How long this is going to take
- The value created by the task
Based on those two factors, you’ll be able to prioritize it and organize it.
On prioritization, my system is pretty simple. Either I need to do it this week or I put in a backlog folder. This folder is reviewed frequently (more on that later).
On organization, some people have a very complex system of labels. Mine is very simple, I label tasks small task or long task. Small means you can do several of them in a 25-min time slot (you’ll understand the 25-min time slot later in the article). Long means you’ll need at least one 25-min slot or several.
This enables me to treat small tasks in batches and to make sure I have enough time to complete a long task.
c) Reviewing it frequently
I used to be very, very bad at to do lists. I would look at my list and there would be so many items to be done yesterday, or the day before that were not done yet. Just looking at my list would stress me out, so I would stop using it until the next time I would think “I really need a proper to do list”.
The key to avoiding that is to have a daily routine. I do it at the end of the day, but it could be first thing in the morning.
- Review what was done and not done
- If some things scheduled for today are not done, reschedule them or put them in your backlog or delete them (maybe you realize they’re not important after all)
- The one rule is you should never, ever have a task scheduled in the past. Once you do, you’ve entered to do lists user hell and you might be lost forever.
On top of that, I review my backlog folder every week to see if anything in there should be prioritized for the coming week. My backlog folder is a bit of a mess and I think that’s fine, there’s no point ordering it, it’s just a list of things you think you’ll have to do at some point. That being said, delete any task that’s not relevant anymore.
Beyond the notebook, I use Todoist. There are many to do list apps on the market, and the one you choose is not that important. Applying the right method and being disciplined is 10x more important. I like the two following things about Todoist:
- They have a gmail plugin enabling you to turn any email into a task. This is so useful, especially when applying the 2-minute rule to managing emails.
- Both the web and mobile apps are pretty neat in terms of UX. For example, if you create a task “do this tomorrow”, it will automatically schedule that task for tomorrow.
I just have one folder called backlog, and two labels: short and long.
2/ Turn off all your notifications
There are countless studies that show that when interrupted during a task, getting back to the level of productivity you were at takes several minutes. I won’t bother linking to them because I think you don’t need studies to understand that, it’s pretty obvious.
When you get a notification for every email, every whatsapp message, every text, you’re just losing a ton of time.
Now, when I say that, I get asked how can I still be notified of really urgent things that require my attention? Tell your team / family they can reach you by phone.
I personally deactivate all my notifications thanks to the “Do not disturb” feature on my iPhone. The great thing about it is that you’ll still get calls from your contacts in favourites. So you can still see the urgent call from your husband / wife / mother / colleague while avoiding all prospecting calls and other time-wasting notifications.
3/ Handle emails and small tasks in batches at specific times of day
The corollary of the previous point is that in order to be on top of your emails, you should carve out some specific time during the day to handle your emails. I would advise once or twice a day.
I do a quick check of my emails around noon, and I manage most of them in the evening at the end of the day.
I’ll explore tips, tools and shortcuts to be extra efficient when handling emails in the thirs article of this serie (to be published next week).
4/ Be extra focused thanks to the Pomodoro technique
This is one of my favorite techniques. Using it has drastically improved my productivity. The idea is to break down your time as follows:
- 25-min time slots of deep work (called one Pomodoro)
- 5-min break every 25min
- 15–20min break after four Pomodoros
What I find brilliant in this technique is that it makes it easy to be in deep work during the Pomodoros. After all, focusing on one thing for 25 minutes is not that hard, you can definitely resist the urge to check your phone / social media / email / whatever usually prevents you from working for that long.
Hardcore Pomodoro advocates will tell you it’s crucial to stick to the exact method. I actually take a lot of liberty with it: doing longer time slots for some tasks, skipping some breaks, etc. I think you should start with the exact framework and then take some liberty with it once you’re used to it.
5/ Apply the 2-min rule
This other gem comes from Getting Things Done. When required to do a task, either it takes less than 2 minutes to complete it and you should do it right now, or it takes more and you should just capture the task in your to do list to be handled at a later point.
This is particularly useful for emails. If an email requires an action item from me, I’ll usually turn it into a task unless it’s very fast to do.
If you don’t do that, you’ll end up spending hours working, looking back and not really being sure of what you’ve achieved.
6/ Avoid most meetings and make the others shorter
Let’s be real, most meetings are a waste of time.
For every meeting that’s asked of you, ask yourself whether it really is the best use of your time to fulfill your objectives. If those meetings are imposed by a hierarchy, feel free to express to them why you think this is not the best use of your time to reach the objectives (that you should have defined with them). If your manager really cares about you performing, they should be open to your arguments.
Some companies go as far as doing no meetings at all (French startup Alan for example). I will not be as radical. I still think meetings can be useful to meet a client, brief one or two colleagues, etc.
That being said, the length of most meetings doesn’t make any sense. Most 30-min calls could actually be done in 15-min. Most 1h meetings could be done in 30 or 45 minutes. I believe you should never have a meeting lasting more than 45 minutes. If you pay attention, the last 15 minutes of a 1h meeting never add value.
I will share a third article next week with my 7 favorite tools & tips related to productivity. Please follow us if you want to be notified!
I’m always looking to learn more, I’d love to hear from you what are your methods and tips to ensure maximal efficiency! Please feel free to comment.
Lastly, if you clap 20 times this post and comment with your email address, I’ll send you a nice PDF right away with the content of the three articles!
