I am a somewhat lazy person.
This is incredibly helpful for me. It allows me to usually get my work done with time to spare.
To think of all those nights spent rote learning and working super hard to hand in my assignment the next morning. Fair to say, I’ve learned a few things about time management since then.
By implementing techniques and principles learned in some really awesome books, and listening to advice from workhorses masquerading as people, I now manage to save a good amount of hours each week after finishing my week’s work.
More hours! Which means more funny cat videos. Or more projects. Or more and more frequently, both.
Given below is a guide of some techniques and principles I learned to this end. My system comes straight from some of the experts in the biz (think James Clear, Thiago Forte, or Korak Bhaduri) and should help you get that extra buffer day in your workweek.
Let’s go!
Plan. Plan. Plan.
Big surprise, right? Planning helps.
Our brain will always tell us to trust it to remember all that needs to be done. Don’t do it.
As Robin Sharma once put it, “Our brain is a wonderful servant but a terrible master”.
Trust task management systems and calendars instead.
When you begin your work cycle, write a list of things that you need to get done, and assign specific timelines for each individual task. Be thoughtful in this duty. In fact, take a long time if you need to. Once you have an ideal work/time distribution in hand, you will be surprised at how smoothly work flows.
Now, you don’t need to worry about the big task you need to get done at the end of your work cycle. All you need to worry about is finishing today’s goals as per the schedule. Once you’re done, you’re free! Of course, you could keep working if you wanted to, but go ahead hang out with your friends if you like. Your tasks of the day are done.
I recommend using apps like Notion, Todoist, or Trello to help plan out your workweek.
If you need any additional help, there’s a video tutorial/demonstration I made explaining how I use Notion to plan out my work week. Feel free to check it out!
Create an awesome work environment
Where you sit down to do your work is extremely important. There are specific triggers in your daily work environment that subconsciously tell your brain to get into the hustle zone. These triggers become blurry if your work environment is dirty, unorganized, or full of other distractions.
Having a clean work desk doesn’t necessarily mean having everything organized in military precision. Your workspace can look like a garbage dump to an outsider. What’s important is that you can always find what you’re looking for. Every second you spend looking for something instead of working gives your brain another excuse to petition to take a break.
While designing your work environment, try and implement the other senses too. Work playlists help!
When you have all you need ready to go at a moment’s notice, you easily transition to the sweet flow. Work becomes so much easier that you don’t even realize how much you’ve already completed.
The value of having things organized beforehand is apparently super important in professional kitchens too. I recently learned about this concept of “mise en place” by reading a blogpost one of my friends wrote.
Decide Immediate rewards
One of the most important things to understand about procrastination is the fact that it’s actually the trade-off of future rewards for immediate benefits.
Sure, finishing this project might help my personal brand eventually, but watching that Markiplier video would make me laugh now.
This concept was highly reinforced in James Clear’s book, ”Atomic Habits” which is practically the holy book of productivity.
Keeping in mind this insight is important, as it allows us to hack our brains to get work done. Whenever we sit down to complete a chunk of work, we should decide on an immediate reward for completing that work. Whatever we want to do should come as a direct consequence of whatever we have to do. Soon, our brain starts associating work with immediate benefits. By using this conditioning to our advantage, our brain’s resistance to sit down and get work done is highly diminished.
On free time
I once had a Chemistry teacher who used to say, “The time you spend studying matters less compared to what you do in your free time”.
I agree. Chances are, you work for fewer hours than you do everything else combined. Having an 8-hour workday still means you have two-thirds of your day to yourself. What you make of these 16 hours can play a major role in deciding how your workflow goes.
In your free time, find some time to exercise. Even if you hate it initially, just go outside and move your body. Once you take the first step, you might be surprised how easily everything else falls into place. Exercise frees up so much mental space. It prepares your body and mind to tackle those problems that seem the hardest. Sometimes, when I personally face a challenge that seems too daunting at first glance, I go outside for a run! When I come back, I can usually take it head-on.
There are a few other things to keep in mind. Robin Sharma advocates the importance of the first 10 minutes in the morning, and the last 10 in the night. He says these are the most important times in a day.
Use this time to set an agenda, meditate, or just listen to the music that you like. I highly recommend not using screens during this time. Coming from someone who’s tried both, I assure you, your Instagram updates can wait.
Eat the frog. Have it with some Pomodoro sauce
Very recently, I came across two other really awesome productivity techniques. The first one’s called “Eat the frog”. It encourages us to go tackle the hardest task we need to get done first thing in the morning. To go and, you guessed it, “eat the frog”.
The hardest task is the one that offers us the most resistance. For as long as we don’t do it, and concentrate our efforts on other smaller tasks, it remains a source of anxiety and pressure for us.
Thus, it eventually compromises our ability to get anything done at all.
I also learned that the task offering us the most Resistance is often what we really need to get done to grow. (Capital R Resistance. Ahh the very source of all evil.) It is a good indication of the biggest blockade on the road to our goals. Steven Pressfield’s book is full of such wisdom and talks in great depth about Resistance.
The Pomodoro technique is another thing I have started to implement. It makes use of short work sprints. 25 minutes of work with 5 minutes of rest, or 1 Pomodoro. Using this technique can really help boost your productivity. Instead of sitting for long hours on end getting very little done, try using shorter work sprints and even shorter intervals of rest.
I know it’s worked for me, I’m pretty sure it will work for you too! You can learn more about the technique on its official website.
Heyo! Good to see you here in the end. Hope my two cents on productivity are going to help you out in finally getting those projects done!
I’m gonna go watch that Markiplier video I was putting off.
See you soon (: