There is No Excuse for Being Unprepared
What to do when there’s too much to do. Get more by doing less.
UK is named the ‘unpaid overtime capital of EU’ although it still is not number one on the world’s most productive nations list. Daily, we see a lot of people around us who crossing the 40 hours per week limit. Quite often.
A study from Stanford University argues that long hours and productivity are not necessarily directly proportional. In fact, it may result in loss of productivity causing employees to experience fatigue or stress. Also rise in errors, accidents, or sickness is likely. Prof. Pencavel says that after 50 hours the slump in productivity begins and after 55 hours stagnation is reached. Poor time management, disorganization, and unstructured working style are a few disregarded causes of half of your daily struggle.
Let’s start with a question. Have you ever encountered a situation when you are trying to finish that important user story and the voice in your head says, Wait, I need to urgently answer the email from my boss. As you start writing the email, the meeting notification pops up. An update about the escalation is forwarded to you and demands your immediate attention. Overwhelming!
One more notification and your saturation alarm set off!
Distractions are bound to happen causing you to lose your focus while working. Check out the following hacks when you gotta do more in less time:
- Shut the phone up!
Switch off all notifications or at least the lock screen notifications because turning the phone upside down or silencing it does not suppress the desire to have a ‘quick’ look at it. There is no greater distraction when you are trying to focus on your work and notifications/unnecessary updates on your phone begin to pop up. Avoid using social media on your work phone or laptop.
- Analysis paralysis
This is caused when everything on your To-Do list seems important and deciding what to do first seems like a run down the rabbit hole.
Classify tasks into urgent, important, and leisure. Prioritize using numbers while entering each task. Sticky notes can be a great help. Stick 3 of them on your table with Urgent, Important, and Leisure titles. As you identify/get tasks in the course of the day, keep pushing these tasks from the To-Do in your mind to the respective post-it. If you need a digital version of this on your laptop, use the sticky notes app.
- Poor Planners vs Procrastinators
These 2 categories are often used interchangeably. Dr. Amanda Coleman, a student-mentor for over 20 years, clears the facts — “Poor planners are not Procrastinators”.
She also adds, “Unfortunately, poor planners assume the solution to their problems is to buy a planner. In fact, they may have lots of planners — each half filled-out before they realized it wasn’t working and gave up. The reality is that planners only work if you have planning skills. If you lack the underlying skills needed to use a planner effectively, it won’t help you.” - Too many notifications spoil the focus
Inbox (12,164) — is this familiar to you? The constant bombardment of marketing emails can make you overlook your important emails. Use the settings in your inbox to segregate your emails even before you see them. Create folders/divisions in your inbox like Direct (emails where your name is in To, they need your immediate attention.) Gmail offers tab feature to automatically separate the promotion clutter from your important emails.
- Blockers in Calendar reduces blockers in your work time.
If a major chunk of your work/day has to be dedicated to a specific task eg. Answering emails, preparation for the stand-up meeting, reading news, approving requests. Block the respective time duration (e.g. 8.40–8.50 for 9.00 am stand up preparation) or 15.00 to 15.20 -> approving requests or 1 hour before or after lunch for reading news and emails.
Hack: Use descriptive titles to avoid getting confused. Mark the blockers as Busy or DND depending on how much focus it may need. Do not forget to consider the seemingly invisible 5 minute transition time between your blockers.
In case you need help in setting blockers:
- Bonus — Deep Work
It is productive to mark 2 hours of your calendar (whether on workday/weekends depending on the workload) only for focused work. [DND]. It can be used for learning a new skill or completing the urgent feature/presentation in your project. During this time all your notifications should be off, so choose this time carefully considering your clients in different time zones) You may optimally keep 30–45 minutes block once a week to handle unforeseen events/exceptions.
If your normal workday starts with a lot of meetings and you have less time for preparation. Productivity experts suggest a 15-minute block every day or every second day for Reflection and Preparation. Think about what worked well and what didn’t. Check the schedule for the next day.
Are you prepared?
- Goal Setting
Targets that must be met over longer time durations have to be divided into weekly, monthly, or yearly Goals.
Hack: Setting a reminder, a week before to prepare for the monthly management meeting will you’re your commitment rather than just showing up without information.
“Strive for progress, not perfection” — Unknown
Mastering any skill needs Practice. Focus is one of them. Shutting out notifications on Day 1 will not be easy. On day 20 you may feel that you previously checked your phone more often (unnecessarily) than you needed it. After a month or 2, the screen time tracker will show significantly fewer figures than usual. A streamlined backlog of work results in improved productivity, work motivation, and efficient decision making.
On a closing note. I reemphasize,
There is no excuse for being unprepared. Just like the tip of an ice berg, people see only what is on top. What all went into getting there is simply not acknowledged. To achieve more, one needs to do more than what is supposed to be done.
Read about my data science story here.
Priyanka Mane | Learner | Digital Content Creator | Connect here:
Instagram: Wanderess_Priyanka | LinkedIn: Priyanka Mane
