I am terrifically good at wasting time.
I seem to get distracted by anything other than work. Sometimes, I just like staring into space. Whilst this is probably quite zen, it also means I have to be really vigilant about getting stuff done.
A while back I saw this productivity tip:
‘Every night, right before you go to bed, write a list of five tasks you need to do the next day. Then aim to cross them all off from the moment you wake up.’
I tried this and it worked. My focus shot up. Then I got sloppy and stopped doing it.
Apparently, my mind found that even this technique was still too demanding. At this point I gave up any real hope of being productive and went back to my messy strategy of juggling tasks.
Then one day, something changed. I guess it had to.
In the run up to launching my latest business I hit breaking point. I had tasks coming out of my ears, from all directions, and I kept forgetting to complete them.
I was getting so overwhelmed that I decided to write an epic, ‘no-holds-barred’ list of all the free-floating gotta-do’s clogging my brain.
I didn’t stop at five tasks this time. I wanted absolutely everything in my life that needed annihilating written down. Little missions, like picking up my library card, were cobbled next to the big important jobs, like writing business admin procedures.
By the time I finished writing I had over ninety tasks on the list: that was a real wake up call to how disorganised I’d become. However, this feeling soon gave way to a wonderful sense of clarity that I had lacked for years.
Then the fun part.
I went through my list, completing and crossing off tasks at my whim. Getting my library card was a cinch and, incidentally, the first task I drew a neat line through. There was no prioritisation: I just did stuff randomly and in the order I felt like.
Crossing out missions was addictive. I soon discovered that the satisfaction of completing little tasks fed into the momentum needed to take on not just the dull jobs but the big and scary ones too.
Why not have a play with this strategy too and see what happens? After all, somewhere on my list I wrote: “Launch new website.”
