How I Get Stuff Done

This list is by no means the be all and end all of how to be productive at work and life. Throughout my time developing web projects, managing digital brands and living with three cats, here are a few things I've learnt along the way that have helped me execute every time.

Write down your to-dos.

As a Project / Product Manager, I've tried every digital to-do list software / app imaginable. Trello, Workflowy, Basecamp, Asana, you name it. Don’t get me wrong, all these solutions are great in and have their place greater project management and workflows. When it comes to managing day-to-day tasks I find the best way to get all your stuff done is to write it down at the start of every day, with little checkboxes on a good old fashioned piece of pen and paper.

By doing this, you force yourself to remember what the most important tasks are for the day. If you don't remember you were supposed to do something, then it probably wasn't that important.

Get granular as there’s nothing more satisfying than bringing pen to paper and checking items off. At the end of the day you feel a great sense of accomplishment looking at a page full of check marks.

Incomplete tasks? No worries. When writing your list for the day look back at your previous list and re-add them to today's current list. By doing this you evaluate if that task was that important in the first place.

Have a plan for every meeting.

I don’t know how many times I’ve walked into a meeting and heard something to the effect of:

Um, so today we're going to be discussing Feature X, so let's talk about it. Who has some thoughts they'd like to share?

There really is nothing worse than a meeting with no direction. You're almost guaranteed to not make any meaningful decisions and waste a good hour of your life you're never going to get back.

Now I'm not saying you have an uber detailed agenda that you distribute to everyone breaking down absolutely everything that's going to be discussed. What I like to do is knock up a high level list of what is being discussed and throw it up on a whiteboard or in a shareable Google Doc for everyone to consume.

To keep things running smoothly, I then assign my own personal timeline to each of the items on the list so I know when it's time to move the discussion forward. Stick to that timeline and stop people from waffling / arguing. Remember, it's your meeting, take control of it.

Don't get hung up on the tools, work with what you know.

I've fallen into this trap many, many times. Recently I was looking for a new way to create a mind map for an idea I had. Wanting to map this idea out in a "really cool way" I went on the hunt for some nifty mind mapping software.

Before I knew it I had tested 3 different products and gotten absolutely nothing done. After a couple of hours of dicking about I eventually decided to just drop into Adobe Illustrator and put the mind map down in less than 30 minutes.

I'll be the first to admit that Illustrator is the complete wrong tool for the job. Yet because I knew all the shortcuts, had years of experience in it, I was able to complete what I needed with no fuss at all.

Of course, it’s great to grow and learn new tools and extend one's skill set. However when it comes to staying productive and knocking things out I findd it’s best to use whatever you're familiar with to get the job done.

"No Distraction" time

People really love meetings, especially unproductive ones. Everyday I would find myself getting invited to meetings, leaving a sad 30 minute to 1 hour gaps in my calendar to get any "actual" work done.

If you want to actually get any work done, carve out "No Distraction" time. I’ve found the simplest thing to do is to go into your calendar and block out a few hours of "Actual Work" time. That way assistants, managers see you as unavailable on their calendars when they try to invite you to their meetings.

This may seem a little obnoxious but folks frustrated by interruption have seen me using this practice and begun to adopt it themselves.

For small companies or start ups, this is much easier. You simply communicate to one another, throw on some headphones and get to it.

I’ve found this becomes much trickier when you're working from home and you have a cat that enjoys to sit directly on your keyboard.

You are not alone

If you're like me, you'll find yourself grueling over details and stubbornly not giving up until you finish what you're trying to do. The result can be a lot of wasted time, getting pissed off and never actually finishing what you set out to do.

Rather than sit there and stew, get up, grab a coffee (or tea) and have some human contact (online or offline). The internet has somewhat advanced since it first began, so reach out to someone.

Personally, nothing else tops having a discussion with a real live human being. Don't be shy, get up, go outside and have a chat with someone. You’ll probably end up getting insights that you never would have thought of.