Everyone wants to be productive, to be efficient. In reality, most people are only productive for about three hours in an eight hour workday. And at most 35% can actually claim to make it through the day without distractions.
Email first
The more connected you are to your team, the more productive everyone will be. The “email first” strategy leverages that connectivity by creating shared knowledge and direct collaboration. Block off the first two hours every day for “doing emails” and only take meetings from 11am onwards. You probably just unblocked tasks for other people.
My stuff first
Some people spend over half of their work days checking and replying to email (4.1 hours, to be exact); it’s a slippery slope of productivity. With the “my stuff first strategy,” don’t look at email at all until you’ve completed your ToDo items for the day.
Working on your ToDo list first ensures you get your most important tasks done before receiving more of them.
Email as to-do
Emailing yourself every time you realise you need to do something is a very common system for productivity.
After all, emails, whether they come from yourself or someone else, are essentially an un-curated ToDo list.
With filters and other advanced features of your mail provider of choice, email task management can be quite efficient.
Calendar as ToDo
Using your calendar as a ToDo list resonates most with me at the moment. If I need to do something, that thing needs time. Usually more than 5 minutes, so I add it to my calendar and usually it gets done!
Again, if you leverage the features most calendars have available, like notifications, you can let others know you’re unavailable while carving out specific time to accomplish your goals.
