Hack Yourself!
OK, so there is no such thing as ‘hacking’ your productivity. Your brain makes a series of decisions. You filter through the noise. You invest time in doing work that matters most. The decisions you make are within the context of your role. And you are in charge of your brain making the right calls at the right time. Still, I believe it is possible to have a systemic way to approach the routine of tasks; Inbox and calendar.
Here are three simple steps that will help increase your efficiency.
Step #1 Mise-en-place
The first thing to do when you get to the office is mise-en-place. Just like a great chef before starting to cook a grand dinner. He makes sure the area is clean, knives are sharp and ingredients are there. So why shouldn’t we do the same at our desk? This is what the mise-en-place may look like:
- Check the calendar for what you have coming up in the immediate future and the rest of the day
- Think. Take a deep breath and decide if you should add any tasks to INBOX that came to mind in the morning (i.e. during your yoga session earlier or drive to the office).
- Check project tasks. Items listed in your project management or CRM tool (i.e. Basecamp, Salesforce or notepad). Ask the question: Does this have to be done today? If so, add tasks to your INBOX (i.e. do follow up sales calls or draft up financial year budget)
- Identify or ‘pin’ (if you’re using Inbox for Gmail) tasks that you want to complete today
- Scan through tasks that you want to complete in the next week and leave them in your Inbox (if you’re using Inbox for Gmail)
Step #2 GTD
As your day progresses, process tasks using the GTD method. I have adopted GTD and customised it to look something like this:
Step #3 Inbox Zero
Process email in INBOX using Inbox Zero system.
You can setup repeating reminders (easy if you’re using Inbox for Gmail) for your email processing (i.e. 8AM, 12PM and 4PM). This should help you attend to email at your own pace.
Big picture
Block out time in the calendar for big picture tasks. This could be high level thinking or working on your action plan. I have at least two long sessions (two hours) allocated every week for an action plan. I also have at least a half an hour session allocated for a weekly review.
Watch your weekly volume of tasks and make sure it’s either getting smaller throughout the week, or at least not growing beyond control. I make sure to have not more than 10 items and no more than 10 projects active at any time.
Repeating
Add repeating events in the calendar if it’s important to block out that time (i.e. work on action plan or review budgets). Or you can also add them as repeating reminders using Inbox (i.e. complete monthly report). The good thing with Inbox for Gmail is that they will both show up in the calendar.
One Day
There will always be tasks that have been sitting in the Inbox for too long and are just not deemed important enough to make it to the project list. Analyse the importance of the task and if you deem tasks should be saved, put it on a backlog list. I use Google Keep for my backlog (Wishlist/Someday/Maybe/One Day). You can use any software for this: Excel, Evernote, or even Notepad. One day you may remember that old task, or have (unlikely) run of out of project/inbox tasks to work on so you can always pull it back out. You should also prune these as part of the weekly review.
So there it is, a manifesto hopefully simple enough to follow and yet sophisticated enough to get stuff done.
Did you enjoy reading this? Then please show support by clicking on the heart!
I don’t write often and would love to get some honest feedback so please let me know what you think.
Get in touch with me at DEJAN
