Make Productivity a Habit with Zen to Done

Changing a single habit is hard enough, but changing them all at once? Nearly impossible. Zen to Done shows you how to develop the habits you need one by one to succeed with a multi-step productivity system. Reinventing the way you live overnight requires a willpower that most of us don’t have.

Zen to Done (ZTD) is a productivity system created by Leo Babauta of Zen Habits

Its goal is to help people build individual habits, step by step, as they work through a workflow management system.

• Four core habits of ZTD include: collect, process, plan, do, and do.

Example workflow for mastering the collect habit

Take time to identify all of your inboxes

• Next, adjust your settings or use a Zap to divert as many of your email inboxes as possible to the tool you selected for your master list
• Consolidate your personal and business Gmail accounts so you can access and respond to all your emails from a single email inbox
• Adjust your notification settings in Trello to request an email notification for all new assignments
• Use YouMail to have new voicemails automatically forwarded to your email
• Not all tasks get assigned electronically, some will have to be manually added

How to begin ZTD with the process habit

Process your email inbox every morning

• Start at the top of the list and process each email you’ve received
• Do: If acting on/replying to the email will take less than two minutes, do it right away
• Defer: Leave deferred tasks in your inbox as read and return to take care of them after processing all of your other unread emails
• Delegate: If delegating is just a matter of forwarding an email with a quick heads-up note, delete or file the original
• Delete: Move spam emails, unneeded receipts, unwanted marketing emails, and things that require no further action to the trash
• File: Create a reference folder (Outlook), label (Gmail), or mailbox for filing emails you might need to access one day in the future

Example workflow for mastering the plan habit

Trello

• A kanban app like Trello offers a cleaner view of all of your outstanding tasks, and it lets you add lanes for different priorities
• Create your own board, and add lanes to separate deferred to dos that haven’t been prioritized
• Label tasks as personal or business
• Add due dates
• Archive completed tasks

The Collect Habit

Stop and document every single thing you need to do

• Collect all of those to-dos in a central system
• Documenting them in the moment keeps your mind clear, lessens the likelihood of forgetting, and gives you a master list to reference when trying to decide where to focus your attention

The Do Habit

When working on big rocks, minimize distractions as much as possible

• Close your email program.
• Switch your status to “do not disturb.”
• Put on some noise-cancelling headphones
• Silence your phone. The point is that you’re more likely to complete small tasks in a single working session, and thus make better progress over multiple sessions

How to begin ZTD with the collect habit

Choose a place to collect all of your to-dos

• Notebook
• Memo app
• Email
• Task management system
• The tool you choose isn’t terribly important-just pick whatever feels natural for you.
• Make sure you have your selected tool with you so you can always document tasks immediately.

How to Begin ZTD with the Plan Habit

Select a few priorities at the beginning of each week and start of every day, and schedule time for them on your calendar.

• Since you don’t have a master to-do or deferred task list, use whatever system you’ve been using-the to-dos in your mind or inbox.

How to Begin ZTD with the do habit

Pick a task-anything you need to do-and focus on it exclusively.

• Take steps to eliminate all possible distractions (eg. coffee)
• In some cases, it takes more than Babauta’s recommended 30 days to break a multitasking habit.

Example workflow for mastering the do habit

By this point, you should have a master list (collect) of deferred to-dos (process) that you’ve prioritized for both the week and the day

• Use a Zap to automatically schedule time on your calendar without ever leaving your to-do list
• Throughout the process, it’s possible to substitute any of the recommended tools with something you prefer more

The Process Habit

Before starting on any new tasks, go through your to-dos one by one, taking one of the following actions

• Do: If the task takes less than two minutes to complete, do it immediately and get it off your list.
• Delegate: If someone else should do the task, send it to that person right away. Delegate as you process to-do items-unless the act of delegating requires more than a couple minutes.
• Deleting: if the task doesn’t require any action, delete it immediately.
• File: Just need to file the item for reference.

Example workflow for mastering the process habit

Create two queues for processed tasks: to do and reference

• When processing your to-dos every day, move deferred tasks into the to-do queue, and move items that need to be filed into the reference queue. When you’re finished processing your list, you’ll have achieved inbox zero.

The Plan Habit

ZTD’s plan habit offers a method of prioritizing deferred to-dos so you’re always working on your most important or most pressing tasks

• At the beginning of the week, review your task list and choose between four and six big rocks to focus on
• Block time on your calendar to work on those big rocks
• As the day/week progresses, more unexpected tasks and surprise meetings will pop up
• First thing each morning-ideally after processing your to-do list-select between one and three additional big rocks

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