7 Tips for staying productive and in control of your day
Life is hectic. On any given day, dozens of things might be vying for our attention. It can be overwhelming and frustrating, but the good news is that you have significant control over how you handle that. Below, I’ve included my top seven tips for managing your day, staying productive, and staying in control of your life.
Create a to-do list
One of the simplest ways you can maximize your productivity and effectiveness during the day is to use a to-do list. While some people look at it as a restriction telling you what you have to do, it works best as a way to direct your energy.
What should actually go on your to-do list? Anything that would best be completed on that day should make it onto your list. This might include putting in time on specific projects for work, your personal life, and anything in between. Generally speaking, if getting it done that day ould benefit you, put it on the to-do list for that day.
Where a lot of people tend to fall short with this is by including things that don't need to be on a small-scale task list. At its heart, that's what a to-do list really is: small tasks that you complete and then mark off as having done so. Things like big overarching projects or large-scale goals do not belong on a daily to-do list. In fact, the best way to handle this is to spend either 15 minutes the evening before or 15 minutes the morning of the to-do list you are planning out. If you don't see a way that you can complete each list item on that day, because there may be one or more things on there that would be impossible to finish in a single day, then those things need to be removed.
A great way to manage the large-scale projects so that they become a useful part of your daily planning is to break them down into smaller pieces. For instance, you might have an item on your goals list to spend a certain amount of time at the gym every week, described as a number of trips or a number of hours. On your daily list, you wouldn’t include, “go to the gym three times per week.” Instead, you would use a daily goal of, “go to the gym for 45 minutes.” Now, you have a smaller task that will lead to your larger goal. You can break down all of your larger goals into these subtasks, that way you know you're always making progress but you are a lot less likely to get overwhelmed by the size of your goals.
Prioritize
Prioritization is a big part of making your daily to-do list. Basically, what is the most important for you on any given day? Maybe your big project at work is due at the end of the week, so you need to prioritize the individual tasks that make up that project on a day-to-day basis. That means that when you are deciding what to do first, any task that supports that project should probably be towards the top of the list.
There are multiple ways of prioritizing what it is you're going to be doing, and when, throughout the day. Most people assume that you should be giving something priority because it is the most important. However, putting things towards the top of the list because they are the most important does not always necessarily garner you the best results. For instance, if you have a list of things to do that all center around being at a particular place, like a shopping center or your home, then it makes sense to clump together tasks that can all be completed in quick succession based on location. Another way to group your tasks and prioritize them during the day is if they are all time-based. For instance, if you know that you will only be able to do the gym and several specific errands in the morning, then it makes the most sense to do those first.
As you look at your tasks, try to group things in the most logical manner possible so that they flow through your day. In many cases, there may be one or more tasks that simply do not group well with others. That's okay. What you can do is take the groups that you've created, as well as the outlier tasks, and try to create the most efficient schedule you can. Don't spend a ton of time worrying over this, because you don't want to waste your entire day trying to plan out your entire day. Rather, go by your experience and instinct to create rough groupings and a basic plan. Chances are, you may need to modify that plan throughout the day, but this will give you a baseline.
Schedule work blocks
Most of us spend a significant amount of our day working. It's an unfortunate truth that in order to earn money and have a lifestyle that feeds, clothes, and houses us while also allowing us to pursue leisure activities, we have to spend an awful lot of time working to earn that money. It can often feel overwhelming to think about the amount of work you need to get done in a given day. This is especially true with entrepreneurs or other career individuals that have a significant amount of control over their own daily tasks.
A great way to get a handle on everything you need to get done is to schedule blocks of work. A work block is a specific amount of time that you will spend on a specific task. Notice that I did not say you will spend it on specific tasks, plural, rather you will spend a block on a specific task, singular. The tendency to attempt to multitask with everything we do runs rampant in American culture, in particular. The problem is, humans are not really that good at multitasking. When multitasking, we tend to be less productive and what we do produce tends to be of lower quality.
But, why is that?
The reason lies in focus. When you’re able to focus solely on a single task, you tend to do better at that task. Instead of multitasking, schedule work blocks so that you can mono-task. Do you know that you're going to have 200 emails coming in today that need to be attended to? Set up a one-hour work block where all you do is focus on answering those emails. Chances are, if you give it your undivided attention the whole block, you'll be able to tear through that email box like nobody's business.
Learning how to use the blocking principle to schedule out your time can also help you in other areas of your life outside work. Want to learn a new skill? Schedule a block of time where you do nothing but practice that skill. Want to feel more connected to your spouse or family? Schedule a block where you do nothing but spend time with your family.
And just to be clear, when I say “do nothing but” whatever your task is that you have assigned to that block, that's what I mean. You won't be checking your email while you're doing family time. You won't be reading a book while you're trying to practice a skill. And you won't be having phone conversations while you’re trying to clear out your email box.
Work blocks are all about mono-tasking, so stick to the thing you scheduled and have at it!
Use the Pareto principle
Also called the “80/20 rule”, the Pareto Principle states that about 80% of results are driven by about 20% of efforts. What does that mean, functionally? Let’s look at the example of a sales funnel I created for the gym business I sold in February 2019 (at a 6-figure profit):
There are multiple things that need to happen in order to take a potential customer (a lead) from being only vaguely aware of what you're selling, to actually making a purchase. In my case the path was:
Become aware of the service through advertising.
Click on a link to find out more.
Fill out an interest card or leave a voicemail.
Go through a screening process to make sure the service works for them.
Do a call/meeting to determine the customer’s needs, hear solutions, and close the sale.
Receive follow-up/on-boarding communication to get them started.
In the entirety of the sales funnel, there are 6 steps and we want to focus on the most important 20% (roughly), meaning only one or two steps. From experience and data, the most important steps were #4 (screening) and #5 (sales call/meeting). Leads that completed these steps made up 80% or more of the total sales for the business, while those that skipped one or both steps were much less likely to buy. From a practical standpoint, getting those steps to be the best they could possibly be was the 20% of effort that would yield the greatest results.
This is just one example where a small part of the total effort leads to a large part of the total success. Your goal is to identify the 20% of your efforts that lead to 80% of your successes. Which projects, or even steps in a given project, tend to be the most important? Once you start identifying the most important actions, you can focus on getting those done first.
This is especially helpful when you have tight deadlines and you need to start deciding what to prioritize over something else. If you know you are only going to get done 75 to 80% of a project within the timeline you've been given, then you should focus all of your efforts on finishing the most important 20% first. Once that's done, you can start filling in the rest of the project working from most important to least important pieces.
Schedule important personal / leisure activities
Just as important as scheduling your work activities, you should also be scheduling important personal activities. Examples include going to the gym, making healthy meals, and family time. It may seem counterintuitive to schedule this kind of thing into your day, but it is very frequently forgotten about when someone is trying to stay on top of all of the work they give themselves.
Yes, you read that correctly.
Most of us are trying to stay on top of all of the work that we give ourselves, not that is necessarily being given to us. Many of the tasks we create aren’t necessary; we’re just expanding our to-do lists to fill the time we have available. As that occurs, we are slowly but surely blocking off the time that we need for personal needs. It's all well and good to be hyper-productive when it comes to work projects, but you also need to focus an equal amount of effort and time on keeping yourself healthy, happy, and fulfilled.
This is another one of those facets of life that people tend to find counterintuitive because the idea that you would allow yourself to become unhealthy or your overall happiness to fall by the wayside in order to do more work seems like the kind of thing we would know better than to put ourselves through. The reality is that many people allow personal health, well-being, happiness, and relationships to take a back seat to their career or running a business. This actually has the opposite effect that we would like to believe. I mean, it can't be bad that you spend a lot of time focusing on success, right?
Yep, it totally can.
When you spend all of your time only focusing on work, you will tend to be less happy. Because you are less happy, factors directly influenced by your level of happiness are going to suffer. Once that begins to occur, it becomes a vicious cycle as you try to work more to make up for the fact that you're not as productive because you're not happy because you already work too much. Breaking that cycle can be much more difficult than not allowing it to take hold in the first place.
People who take the time to attend to their personal needs are more successful at work and happier in general. Happy people are more productive, more creative, and more pleasant to be around.
Leave work at work
Said another way, “keep your personal and family time sacred”.
Work is an important aspect of life, and people tend to be happier when they have some sort of productivity goal in mind. Whether that's their own business, the work that they do for someone else, or developing skills for the fun of it, humans tend to do better when we accomplish something on a regular basis. The whole idea behind gamification, for instance, uses this tendency to great impact.
That being said, it is very possible to go a little bit too far in that focus on being successful or being productive. When work starts to creep into other aspects of your life, you can start to see very real problems develop. For example, if you are in the middle of family time but you constantly check your phone for new emails or new messages from clients, how focused on quality family time can you really be? The answer is, you're not. You are still focused on work, and the chances are very good that you don't need to be.
Obviously, there are going to be exceptions to this tip. If you are a medical professional or emergency responder who is on call, obviously you need to be paying a certain amount of attention to the possibility that you will be called upon to do your job at any moment. However, it's also likely that you can set-up a simple system that will alert you if that need arises. You won't need to keep checking, because the system itself will tell you when you are necessary, and the system itself will allow you to enjoy your leisure time until that occurs. Having your phone on high volume with a specific ringtone for whoever would be calling you in is a really good way to make that happen. Unless that ringtone goes off, don't check your phone. Simple, but very effective.
Make time for family time
I decided to call this one out and give it its own tip, because I feel like a lot of people tend to let this one fall by the wayside just as much, if not more, than their personal health. I've never met a single person who, going into retirement or on their deathbeds, said the following words:
“I really wish I had made more time for work.”
Generally, people don't regret not working more in their younger years. Do you know what they do regret? Not spending more time with their families. Not developing better relationships. Not taking the time to actually have a life, rather than working all the time.
On the surface, this can very easily be included in the prioritizing personal needs section above, but it goes a little bit deeper than that. People with strong relationships tend to be happier and more productive. It's as simple as that. Take the time to get away from your career or your business, and develop those relationships that will keep you going later into life. When you do, you’ll find higher levels of interconnectedness and fulfillment help keep you happier, more emotionally even, and more pleasant to be around.
Closing
Managing your day to day can be challenging, to say the least. Life is far from simple and sometimes you need strategies to help bring things into perspective. I hope the tips we discussed in this article help you along the route to a more fulfilling, happier, less stressful life.
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