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5 tips for productivity

I’ve been a busy person for several years now. During these busy times I’ve been searching for a system that would allow me to stay on top of my workload. I’ve tried David Allen’s GTD system to no avail. I’ve tried using a PDA, again to no avail. About six months ago I decided it was time to develop my own system, which I’ve been quite pleased with my progress on said system. I was going to wait until I felt like it was in a more presentable form, but Aaron just tagged me post my five top tips for increasing your productivity. So, here are my tips:

1. Get up early. My most productive time happens before noon. That’s right after lunch, I get exponentially less work done. Does that mean that I don’t have crazy late night work sessions where I accomplish some great work? No. The trend, however, is that I get more done before people start showing up to the office and when my brain is the freshest. When I was younger, say in college, I could do more work after noon, but that’s because I didn’t have 150-200 emails to respond to, or a dozen or so voice mails, or 2-3 meetings, and all of the other responsibilities that come with a “real” job. BTW, if you are having trouble waking up early, try wearing pajamas (not just boxers or the like) because it’s easier to get out of bed if you’re warm.
2. Eat. I was going to say eat breakfast, but the truth is it’s important to eat regularly throughout the day. Your mood and attention span are regulated by your food intake, and I now for a fact that most programmers, designers, and creatives don’t eat breakfast and often skip lunch because they are steeped in a project. Make the time to eat because you will be more productive for longer if you have the fuel it requires to do so.
3. Create email and voice mail rules. As I said before, I receive a ton of email. The only way I stay on top of it is by using the rules in Entourage that allow me to sort my email as I receive it. Not all communications require immediate attention, so by auto sorting my messages I can focus my attention on the things that really need it and casually skim those that are low priority. My voice mail rule is that I use my outgoing message to say for faster response, leave me a text message. I also use my outgoing message to redirect all voice mails to a single box, meaning I tell people on my work phone to leave a message on my cell phone.
4. Keep a daily task sheet. This is my secret sauce. My daily task sheet is my own personal GTD system. I could just post my task sheet without explaining it, but that would be sad. I think the reason GTD didn’t work for me is that it was too advanced for my level of organization habits at the time I first read it. I needed to go through my own growth process before arriving at a place that worked for me. Here’s the evolution: I started by simply writing to-do lists for myself. The problem was that I was doing that on random pieces of paper and there was no continuity. I also couldn’t track other important parts of my daily responsibilities. After being tired of feeling like I was missing obligations, I created my first task sheet, which looked like this:

   

   My logic for this first sheet was that I needed to keep track of four things: 1) My billable hours, 2) My appointments, 3) My to-do list, and 4) My open communications. My open communications were the points I was most excited about tracking. The issue I was trying to address was that I would commonly make a promise as I caught up with someone in the hall or over the phone, yet I had no solid way of capturing that promise. Additionally, I would in turn ask someone to do something and would forget to follow up on that request because it was not captured either. Open communications allowed me to capture both by checking either respond or follow-up. After a week or so of using version one of my task sheet, I noticed I wasn’t using my to-do list because everything fell into open communications. I also noticed that it was hard to quickly visually distinguish my requests and promises. I created a second version of my task sheet that looked like this:

   

   In addition to the separating the open communications into requests and promises, I added a check box to track if the task was completed. I also dropped the feature that allowed me to know if I heard or made the request via phone, email, or in person because I never needed that information. I used this version for another week or so before creating version three, which looks like this:

   

   On this version I merged the timesheet and appointments because I just ended up drawing an arrow from the appointments column to the timesheet column. I added a due date and a “who” field to the tasks because I needed that info. I also made the promises section twice as large as requests because I seemed to have more promises than requests that I needed to manage.

   If you would like to use the task sheet, here’s the .pdf version of my daily task sheet. I have started placing many copies of it in a binder so I can record appointments in the future. I also have blank paper to capture meeting minutes and make sketches to explain things or have them explained to me.

5. There is no 5 because 4 was so huge! ;)

So, there it is, my five top tips for increasing your productivity. I’ll add more to my daily task sheet system as it evolves, but at least some progress is out there that might help someone sooner rather than later. I suppose I should tap a few folks to keep the chain going, and the nominees are:

• Matt King
• Marshall Kirkpatrick
• Mr. Diggles
• Garett Stenson
• Dad