Productivity Hacks: One Task To Start Your Work Day

When it comes to our careers, it is assumed that the higher the ladder we go, the better the job gets, and this is the same assumption our managers make when promoting us. This is however not always the case, as sometimes a promotion may mean that you no longer  do the things you love to do, or the time to do them . This happened to me late last year, when a change of role meant that the focus of my work was more longer-term and strategic, as opposed to before when I was really hands on, and really enjoyed my work. While before I was part of the action, my role had changed to a guiding role. For a few months last year and the beginning of this year, I was discouraged for several reasons but the key one being, my work has become that of a Chief Reviewing Officer (always reviewing other people’s work), Chief Relationship Officer (I couldn’t focus for 30 minutes without interruptions), and Email Forwarding Officer(the sheer volume of email correspondence I handled in a day was overwhelming). I longed to “create” something, but I didn’t know when to do this.

As I read material around the internet, I came across an article that recommended planning your day in such a way that you do the more important, brain intensive tasks at the start of your work day. This sounds obvious  right?

It may be obvious on paper, but most of us start our work day by reading and responding to email. If your role is like mine, opening your email box means 3-4 hours of document review and responses, which lead to more emails, and by the end of the day, all you have done is respond to communication.

Instead of doing this, sit down after the previous work day, and decide  one important task that you will work on first thing the following day. The next day, dedicate between 1-3 hours to this task, after which you can attend to your email inbox and handle meetings. You will find that over time, you accomplish more meaningful tasks this way, as opposed to spreading your important tasks throughout the day. For example, I have been working on a business plan for the last month, by randomly collecting my thoughts on a Powerpoint deck, and making very little progress because interruptions were rife. By deciding to focus on this 1 task for one hour every morning instead, I bet I will be able to do better.

Tips to do this effectively

• If your office environment isn’t conducive for focused work as is the case with many open plan offices, spend the 1-3 hours away from the office, either working from home, or even in a coffee shop, before going to the office. Most organizations are becoming more flexible as far as alternative working arrangements are concerned. If this isn’t possible, talk to your colleagues about your plan, and politely request for some alone time either on your desk or in the board room.
• To stay focused, consider installing the Pomodoro app or Google Chrome extension, which helps you do your tasks in chunks of 25 minutes each. The extension is great because it also blocks some websites, preventing you from “wandering off” to social media.
• Consider diarising the main tasks that you accomplish. This not only helps you keep a good record of your accomplishments for purposes of performance reviews, you are able to document the lessons you learn along the way. I will be writing more about diarising your work day on the next Productivity Hacks post.

Do you struggle to focus at work? What productivity hacks do you use to stay focused in today’s distracting work place?

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