How to Stay Productive With An Irregular (Even Unpredictable) Schedule
Mastering productivity amidst chaos can be a daunting task. Yet, with an unpredictable schedule, it becomes an essential skill. Discover strategies to maintain efficiency and achieve your goals, no matter how irregular your timetable may be.
The traditional workday is designed for knowledge workers who sit at a desk from 9 AM to 5 PM every Monday through Friday
but most of us don’t work within the confines of this structured schedule.
- 84% of women and 68% of men spend time doing household activities on an average day, and 10-20% of workers have irregular and on-call work schedules.
Remember Your Routine Is Yours
Playing to your body and brain’s own natural rhythm is a much better recipe for productivity than shoehorning yourself into a routine that doesn’t fit
- Tweaking common productivity tips and your routine to fit how you like to work is a sure-fire way toward success
Why Do Our Brains Work Best With A Routine?
A solid routine fosters a well-worn groove for one’s mental energies and helps stave off the tyranny of moods.
- In the right hands, a routine can be a finely calibrated mechanism for taking advantage of a range of limited resources: time, willpower, self-discipline, optimism.
Build Routine Around The Non-Work Parts Of Your Day
When you have a pre-existing routine, it’s easier to fit work into it when it arises
- Barbara Boyd follows the same basic routine regardless of her current workload
- This means sticking to morning rituals and daily walks and using the time that might be used for work for another home or creative project.
Routine Is Greater Than Willpower
Routine is a much stronger and more enduring motivator than willpower
- Once you put in the work to establish a routine, you can work within it like clockwork
- You have more mental energy left over for things like creativity and the actual work you do
Create Structure Around Work
Develop a reserve of cues that tell your brain it’s time for work-and outline a structure you can tap into whenever you need to get down to business
- Working from the same place
- Always listening to the same music or background noise while you work
- Instituting a hard-stop time every day, no matter what
Be More Productive Whenever Work Happens
By creating routines, building structure around work, and working with your body’s rhythms, you can supercharge productivity no matter how weird or crazy your schedule and to-do list get
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Routines Tell Your Brain What’s Expected Of It
Routines send a message to your brain about what’s expected and what comes next
- This reduces decision fatigue and fight-or-flight stress
- It helps you cultivate the “flow” state that leads to radical productivity
- A routine takes the list of tasks you should do at some point, and schedules them into a specific time and place
3 Tactics To Manage Productivity For Irregular Work
Following a regular routine has big benefits for productivity, creativity, and all the good stuff.