We know how life is. We all know that yeah? It is difficult and also it is beautiful. Challenging situations make it more interesting. In our day-to-day work, we struggle to maintain time even though we all have got 24 hours to spare or to spend. As an enterprise architect, I often get work that is hard to manage. A lot of client meetings, planning sessions, and documenting sessions. I fall into the trap of forgetting highly prioritizing works.
I am not a master in time management but in this article, I would like to cover some of the simple techniques I follow to catch up with the tasks and complete them on time.
#1 Keep your Inbox zero
In our work life, there is one thing we all do in common that is emailing. No matter whether you are at the bottom of the triangle or at the top of it. The higher the level you go, the more emails you get to reply to or to take action. If you miss one single email in between, there will be follow-up messages and also many other things will start piling up.
Your life would be like, I literally have over a thousand emails in my inbox that need to be returned. I’m sure all of my friends and certain family members are like, ‘Oh, look who got nominated for an Emmy and doesn’t want to write me an email back!’ I need a good few hours to just sit and get on the phone.
It is good to reply to important emails you receive within 60mins (Workday scenario). One tip you can follow to be on top of this is, before logging out of the work, keep 30 mins of your time to process the email. Categorize them and sort emails into different folders. I usually segregate them project-wise and team-wise.
I only move emails to another folder only if the action has been taken. Otherwise, I will keep it in my inbox. By doing this most of the days I reply to all the emails I get and move those emails to folders. Result? My inbox will always be zero at the end of the day.
The same process I do when I start my day as well. Mostly my day starts at 7 AM so I take time till 7:30 to sort my emails and make my inbox zero again.
#2 Stick to one productivity tool
“The true price of anything you do is the amount of time you exchange for it.”― Henry David Thoreau
In this ever-changing world of technology, every day someone will start coding their own tools and release them to the market. Choosing the right one is a challenge. A tool should always be having good integrations with other tools you use so that you can see everything in one place. The more tools you use without integrations, the less productive your work life would be.
If you want to choose a tool that works for you more, stick to the basics. One fun fact is, people still use Notepad more than any other fancy note-taking apps. One tool which I use to keep everything I collect from we and also from my mails is, Notion. It is an app to dump anything you want. It is free and also good to use. It is very Intuitive. You can import your existing notes from Evernote and other apps as well.
I am not telling you to use the same tool that I use, but it works for me. So you got to figure out one tool that helps you to dump everyday data from your mind to digital paper or actual paper.
Here is the list of some tools you can use to improve your productivity,
- Notion — Dump everything
- Outlook — Emails and Tasks
- Notepad or Sticky Notes — Temporary note-taking app
#3 Label your priorities
“The root of productivity is in personal priorities. Know what matters to you and why.” — Melissa Steginus
Marking something that is very important to you will make your work easier. When there is an email comes that requires my immediate attention, I use this 2-minute rule, “If you can reply or respond to the mail and time it takes is less than 2-min, I don’t think of putting that email on the waitlist.” I learned this rule in one of my LinkedIn courses.
I label my emails in 4 ways, Work, Side Hustle, Trainings & Invites. These 4 labels make me organize my meetings, emails, and other tasks that I do in Outlook. It works for me pretty well.
#4 Experiment with new tools
‘Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.’ — Marcus Aurelius
Never settle seems to be a bit confusing statement but it works. Many of us think that experimenting with new tools and adopting them is the opposite of productivity. As far as my concern, as long as I research and be open to learning new tools to make my work better is the opposite of counter-productivity. This helps me to stay open to new possibilities and get ahead of my old traditional self who wants to stick to a notepad and get confused when the content of the pad increases.
Often looking at our old practices in a new way of giving it a break to look for better things out there. Always remember, there is a better tool out there than what you are using right now to help get things done. Never settle, always keep learning and do a lot of experiments.
#5 Keep your tension score always to -1
The truth is that stress doesn’t come from your boss, your kids, your spouse, traffic jams, health challenges, or other circumstances. It comes from your thoughts about these circumstances. — Andrew J. Bernstein
What is a tension score? It is just a number you give in between -1 and 1 which tells you how good your mood is. -1 is always mean calmness and 1 means you are stressed. This is what I give to my mental health at the end of the day. If it is 0 then I am neither stressed nor calm. If I get 1 for continuously 3 days, I will take a day off from work to restore my mental health.
You might ask this question, how can I take a day off, it is required for your productivity. For an instance, If I keep continuing to work even after getting 3 continuous 1s, On the 4th day I accomplish very little and that forces me to push for the 5th day, 6th day, and so on. All my pending works will pile up and will become a big mountain which is very hard for me to climb (I am very bad at trekking). If you love trekking mentally, you can always go ahead with what you are doing right now but if you want to change the fact that getting things done efficiently, take a day off.
What you do in your off workday is very important. Try to relax and read books or read quotes you get inspired the most. No computers or laptops that day. You can use your cell phone minimally and get lots of sleep. This will restore your mental health. When you get back to work after that, your productivity will increase at least to 40%. This is my own experience that I am sharing with you all.
Summary
These are the practices that I follow to make sure I keep up with my work and get things done. When things are too difficult for me, it is always a good idea to take a step back and reflect on what you are doing and come back to what you were doing later.
There are 100s of tips and tricks out there to be productive and out of all those tricks these tricks I found very effective. I am not the one who invented these tips or practices, I am just a follower of them. As I read many books and listen to podcasts, this gives me an idea and those ideas helped me to find my own practices. I wish you find yours as well and I hope these points above mentioned will help you in finding your own productivity mantra.
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