8 Steps to Get More Productive

Most people overestimate what they can do in a year and underestimate what they can do in two or three decades ~ Tony Robbins

The same applies for our weekly schedules! Most people have a ridiculously endless list of what needs to get done this week and the reality is you won’t even get close to completing the tasks, which usually ends in you feeling deflated for inability to achieve. Let’s try a different approach.

1. Brain Dump
2. Cut it down
3. Chunk it down
4. Prioritise
5. Filter
6. Turn off the voices
7. One task at a time
8. Breathe & Trust

1. Brain Dump

Time to get the jibber jabber and looping out of your head. Open a spreadsheet (I like to use Google Sheets so that I have access on all my devices) and literally list off everything that you need to get done this week. Don’t overthink this first part, we simply want a list of it all. We need it out of your brain and in a spreadsheet that we can start sorting. Keep everything in a single column creating your list.

Depending on whether you are building an empire, navigating change or simply managing your week of constant shizz it will look a little different but trust me this simple approach is a no brainer. 

2. Cut it down

It’s time to cut the list down. Take a look at your 500 items 😝and ask yourself;

‘Is this truly a task I need to tackle?’

‘Is this truly something that I need to do?’

It means that items like re-organising a wardrobe can potentially move to a separate list of One Day. Yes it would be nice but when you are looking down the barrel of getting productive, all your one day items can get shifted out of your peripheral.

3. Chunk it Down

Anything that is a project may need to be broken down into chunks. The more we can break each item into tasks the more likely it is that we can get it done. Eg Organising an Event may become;

• Book the venue
• Create invites
• Build a landing page
• Lock in the speakers

Each one of these items will have a different due date, which means something large is now bite size.

4. Prioritise

Now that you have your list, insert a row above so that you can give the column a name; DETAILS

Then we will have a column for DATE DUE  and one for PRIORITY.

Next to each item you can start filling in a due date, if there is not a due date, it’s time to get one. If it doesn’t have a due date then it has no place on this list, move it over to the One Day list.

Now that you have details of your tasks and a due date you can start writing a number next to it in order of priority. Make sure that you put everything that feels hard, boring or that you have been avoiding first.

Use your fun creative tasks as rewards for getting the other stuff done!

5. Filter

The beauty of working with a spreadsheet is that you can now create a filter to change the order in which you look at your tasks. This is how you do it if using Google Sheets;

1. Highlight the row
2. Click [Data] in the menu and then [Create a filter] in the dropdown
3. Hey presto, an arrow will appear in each column header
4. Click the arrow and choose [Sort A-Z]

Just like magic your list will be switched to the order of priority you need to follow.

6. Turn off the voices

Time to pop your phone on silent and change the music.

Every time you let phone calls, notifications or messages break your concentration, it breaks your momentum and takes you back to the beginning of a task and things twice the time.

Change the music? Yes. Get the vocals off and switch to a Productivity Time Playlist.

The even flow of melodic tunes will help you effortlessly get in flow!

7. One Task at a time

Multitasking is the baseline of inactivity! You may feel like you are getting multiple things done but in reality you are simply starting multiple things and very rarely completing your tasks.

Keep your productivity list in front of you and make your way through the list.

8. Breathe & Trust

The key to any level of productivity is to slow down that monkey mind and breathe.

Slow down. If your mind is still spinning, you need to head back to step one and brain dump a little more.

You’ve got this. Trust  that you will get everything done that needs to be done.

Become a Master of Productivity, you’ve got this!

One Task at a time 😉

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