Maximizing your productivity, whether personally, professionally, or on specific projects, is not easy. But like most things if you put the right plan in place and build a routine (that will eventually turn into habits) you can use the following time management tips and goal setting to get organized and reach your maximum output for productivity.
How to be more productive in 5 steps
- define your purpose
- align your goal setting for success
- get organized by discovering your schedule
- improve time management by prioritizing objectives
- use productivity tools to build your routine for action
1. define your purpose
Defining your purpose is the first step to learning how to be more organized and improve time management. It helps you set the stage for what your should really be working on. What you should devote your time to and what to say NO to.
“Purpose is your compass: do the hard work of uncovering your purpose and summarizing it succinctly. It brings into focus the things that matter most and provides a roadmap for future actions.” ~Scott Belsky
So how do you find your personal purpose?
Find your why
“The WHY is the purpose, cause or belief that drives every one of us.” ~Simon Sinek
Use the “why” test to drill down to the real problem(s) you can solve, and lay the groundwork for a purpose you can connect with deeply.
Think of the problem that YOU are best suited to solve in this world. Think about WHY that problem actually matters to people and keep asking why to each answer until you truly get to the root of the real ‘why’ it actually matters.
Here are a few things to ponder through to help get to your WHY.
- How will the world be better off thanks to you having been on this Earth?
- What are your unique gifts and superpowers (strengths)?
- Who have you been when you’re at your best?
- Who must you fearlessly become?
Develop a personal mission statement
Stephen R. Covey’s book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People®, defines a personal mission statement as: “What you want to be (your character) and what you want to do (contributions and achievements) and on the values or principles upon which being and doing are based.”
Sure that sounds great, but how do I get started?
A great way to get going is to start a collection of notes, quotes, and ideas as resource material for your mission. Use a dedicated couple of pages in a notebook or utilize a note taking application like Evernote. It may take a little while to build your resource material and you will refine as you move along. Once you have a good base for this ‘mission library’ you will always be able to circle back and use as a reference to help reground you for where you should be headed and get fresh ideas (even if the references are old).
Try this exercise to help lead you to the things that truly matter to you. I’ve seen many versions of this used, but Stephen R. Covey does a wonderful job walking us through the thought process within his book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People®, I decided to use his version here.
“Picture yourself going to the funeral of a loved one.
See yourself driving to the funeral, parking, getting out and walking in. You see the faces of friends and family along the way. You feel the shared sorrow of losing, the joy of having known this person that radiates from the hearts of everyone there. As you walk down to the front of the room and look inside the casket you suddenly come face to face with yourself. This is your funeral, three years from today. All these people have come to honor you, to express feelings of love and appreciation for your life. As you take a seat and wait for the services to begin, you look at the program in your hand. There are to be four speakers. The first is from your family (immediate or extended–children, sibling, nephew, niece, cousin, aunt, uncle, even parents or grandparents). The second is one of your friends (a best friend, someone who can give a sense of what you were as a person). The third is from work, your profession. And the fourth is from your community (this can be your church, spiritual group, or community organization where you have been involved in some type of service).
Now think deeply. What would you like each of these speakers to say about you and your life? What kind of husband, wife, father, mother, son, daughter, family member would you like their words to reflect? What kind of friend? What kind of peer or colleague? What character would you like them to have seen you in? What contributions, what achievements would you want them to remember? Look carefully at the people around you. What difference would you like to have made in their lives? Take a few minutes to jot down your impressions.”
Use these initial, unfiltered impressions and start a list of words and phrases that describe you:
- who you want to be
- what you want to strive for, but most importantly
- what you want to be remembered for
A tool like Trello is a wonderful asset for this exercise. I found it extremely helpful to quickly jot down ideas and phrases (or transfer from hand written notes). List them together as items fit logically. Here you can also start to merge topics and further refine. While all items at this point should be priority (if there are items that truly to not fit with your unique mission, remove), you may also want to order items by prominence within each group to further define your story.
Once you have the list (giving yourself plenty of time ponder on, add to, and make revisions) organize these list items under groups such as:
- Spirituality / Community
- Personal
- Family
- Career
Then within the same Trello board create a list for each of the four groups above (community, personal, family, career). Now you can easily drag the words and phrases between each of these groups and order and prioritize accordingly. This will also give you a quick view into how much emphasis you are placing in specific groups/areas and whether you may need to spend some more time thinking through who you want to be as it pertains to those areas in your life.
Once this is complete and you are feeling good about it, now is the time to write down your full mission statement in paragraph form. It is important to compete this step and have this doctrine, if you will, for you to reflect on and guide you moving forward.
Your personal mission statement is probably never complete. You will want to revisit at least once a year, once a quarter, or more often to see how you are adhering and contributing to your mission and whether refinement is needed. But you also want to be careful that you are not removing sections simply because you have not yet been able to meet them. If you feel strongly about it, you want to leave them as guiding principles to strive for.
2. align your goal setting for success
Now that you have defined your purpose by finding your why and developed your personal mission statement, it’s time to align your goal setting to your purpose.
First, identify your roles
You are many things in life. You wear many hats. We are not talking about your professional skill set here, but specific roles you fill likely aligning to the four groups you used for your mission statement exercise above. Some thought starters include: Spouse, Parent, Brother, Sister, Son, Daughter, Friend, Manager, Department Director, People Leader, Sole Proprietor, Founder, Artist, Mentor, Teacher, Student, Doctor, Yoga Instructor, etc.
Document your roles and keep this list available for quick reference. We will be utilizing it later for several activities.
Pro Tip: Adding another list in your Trello mission statement board is a great place to store your roles.
For goal setting to be effective your goals must be S.M.A.R.T.
When setting both your personal and professional goals you always want to keep your mission statement in mind or even better in view. Your goals should always align and latter up to your greater purpose. To ensure you will succeed with your goals they need to follow a formula. That formula is S.M.A.R.T.
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Relevant
- Time-bound
SPECIFIC: Goals cannot be ambiguous. You need to have clear, concise goals you can set your sights on and leave no confusion. Rather than “Loose weight” a specific goal is “Lose fifteen pounds by June”.
MEASURABLE: Tracking the progress of goals is an important part of keeping you motivated. It allows you to set milestones that you can celebrate when you meet them and reevaluate when you don’t. Always have some aspect of your goal that can be measured and evaluated.
ATTAINABLE: We’ve all fallen into the trap of setting impossible goals. While an audacious goal may help push you forward for a while, you will almost certainly end up giving up once you realize it’s unattainable. Instead of impossible, your goals should be challenging yet achievable. Before you set a goal, make sure you can envision yourself achieving it.
RELEVANT: Not all goals are as worthwhile as others. Unless your goal is relevant to your mission, achieving it may not actually accomplish anything that’s important to you. In order to ensure that your goal is beneficial, make sure that it is worth your time. Make sure achieving it will provide positive benefits to your life and make sure the goal aligns to at least some degree with the other goals you have, and ultimately your mission.
TIME-BOUND: Effective SMART goals must have a target time attached to them. Rather than “Read more books” set a defined time frame for the goal such as “Read twenty books within the next twelve months”. With a target date you will be much more motivated to succeed and be able to break the goal down into manageable sub-tasks within the time frame, such as knowing that you need to complete ~1.5 books per month to reach the goal above.
Always keep your goals in view
Once you have your SMART goals set, post them by your workstation to keep them top of mind when prioritizing your tasks. As tasks start coming in, think about how they are contributing (or not contributing) to your goals. If you have lots of tasks coming in that are not helping push your goals forward you will need to evaluate what you are saying “yes” to and where you are devoting your time.
Make goal progress visible
Marking progress is a huge motivator, especially for long-term projects. Make your daily achievements visible by saving iterations, posting milestones, or keeping a daily journal. It also helps to celebrate your progress (big wins and small wins alike). This can be things like:
- sending out positive communications to team members working on the same project congratulating yourselves on the progress you’re making,
- jotting down a quick Hooray! as you check off sub-tasks within your goal, taking a brief moment to silently congratulate yourself on the work you’ve been putting forth,
- having a drink (with your team or even by yourself) and either dedicating a quick “cheers!” to your progress or taking a moment to perform an official toast if this is a bigger milestone.
3. get organized by discovering your schedule
Now that you’ve aligned your SMART goals its time to get organized by discovering a schedule that allows you to maximize your productivity.
Learn how to organize your life by finding your most productive hours
Finding and leveraging your peak hours of the day is key to learning how to be more productive. Following a schedule that utilizes your most productive work hours will ensure that the important projects receive the energy investments they deserve.
How to get organized and find your most productive hours
I ran across a tool on the Trello blog that is based on the work from Chris Bailey. Use this Google Sheets TOOL to record focus, energy, and motivation scores for 3 weeks, taking measurements at the same times every day so the data isn’t skewed.
You will end up with averages across each week and the entire 3 weeks charting your most productive times during the day plus a view into how productive each day of the week is. You’ll want to take notes for the day if there were any unexpected events such as lack of sleep, last minute projects, or anything that could be affecting your focus, energy, or motivation.
You will end up utilizing your most productive hours for important focus work and knowing when either to not focus on work at all, or use not so productive times for more busy or reactive work.
The maker and manager schedule
Are you a manager or are you a maker? Or are you both? Maybe it depends on the day of the week or maybe it depends on your mood, but knowing which hat you’re wearing can make or break your ability to get what you need done for the day. First popularized by Paul Graham, the maker’s schedule / manager’s schedule divides people into two main groups depending on the scheduling system that works best for their type of work, but quite possibly just who they are, how they operate and perform at their best.
The manager schedule
Comprised of meetings (mostly). It’s the traditional appointment book, with each day cut into one hour intervals. You can block off several hours for a single task if you need to, but by default you change what you’re doing every hour or sometimes half hour.
A manager’s day typically consist of preparing for meetings, scheduling meetings, rescheduling meetings, having meetings and debriefing meetings.
Managers don’t necessarily need the capacity for deep focus — they primarily need the ability to make fast, smart decisions.
The maker schedule
A maker’s schedule is different. It’s comprised of long stretches of uninterrupted time reserved for focusing on particular tasks. Usually half day or full day time blocks, but the entire day might be devoted to one activity or projects could string across multiple days. Breaking your day up into slots of a few minutes each would be the equivalent of doing nothing. A maker could be the stereotypical reclusive novelist, locked away in a cabin in the woods with a typewriter, no internet and a bottle of whiskey. Or they could be a software developer working in an open-plan office with headphones on playing their favorite music.
You should be able to block out however much time you need to get “in the zone.” Research shows it takes as long as 30 minutes for makers to hit that sweet spot of flow where things really start to happen.
Uninterrupted time is the key. No Slack or messaging apps. No social media alerts. No phone notifications. And I would suggest turning off email notifications and/or just closing out email altogether while you’re trying to focus.
Once you uncover your most productive hours during the day and week and determine whether you are maker or a manager, you’ll be able to effectively block your time and schedule accordingly.
4. improve time management by prioritizing objectives
The time management matrix
The key is not to prioritize your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.
The time management matrix is based on, or also known as, the Eisenhower Matrix. You effectively place tasks into one of the four quadrants to: Do, Schedule, Delegate, or Delete; which allows you to prioritize your tasks and therefore your time. The quadrants, as you can see from above, are organized by importance and urgency. The thought process is the important tasks you need to do because they are important. So you prioritize those based on urgency to “Do” anything in Q1 and “Schedule” anything in Q2. The non-important tasks that are still urgent in Q3 are “Delegated” to someone else who can complete the task and anything in Q4 is not important and not urgent and should be “Deleted” all together.
Quadrant 2 is the heart of effective time management strategy and where you want to focus most of your energy. These tasks are not urgent, but they are important. These are items like building relationships, writing a personal mission statement, long-term planning, exercising, preventative maintenance, preparation — all those things we know we need to do, but seldom get around to doing because they are not urgent.
The key is to delete Q4 activities as much as possible and delegate Q3. Reduce your time spent on Q1 and increase time and therefore activities, in Q2.
M.I.T. (Most Important Task)
One additional tool to ensure you are completing activities that truly matter to your mission is M.I.T., or Most Important Task.
M.I.T. is a critical task that will create the most significant results. Every day, create a list of two or three MITs, and focus on getting them done as soon as possible. Hopefully your MITs include activities that latter up Q2, but the likelihood is high you will need to place some Q1 tasks here as well.
Ponder this for your MITs:
“What are the most 2-3 important things that I need to do today? What are the things that—if I got them done today—would make a huge difference?”
The key to the MITs: at least one of the MITs should be related to your goals. While the other two can be stuff that just needs to get done today, one must be an action that moves a goal forward today.
All this boils down to… do fewer things better.
- Decide what matters most
- Say no to, or delegate everything else
- When something falls in the grey area, see #2
5. productivity tools to build your routine for action
Now that you know your true purpose, aligned your goal setting, discovered your schedule for organization and have improved your time management skills by prioritizing your objectives it is time to utilize productivity tools to build your routine for action.
Organizing your long and short term planning
This tool is more of a reiteration that combines many of the methods we have already covered. Use these guidelines to organize both your long-term and short-term, or weekly, planning.
Long-term planning should always start with your personal mission statement and filter into one of your roles. Then you develop long-term goals aligning to your roles.
Here’s an example. An item in my mission statement is to “be active and make time for self-care (diet, exercise, yoga, meditation)” and another is “spend quality time with family, friends and loved ones.” These align with my roles as a father and a spouse. This could lead to a goal such as “30 minutes of family yoga every Sunday morning.”
Short-term or weekly planning should first start with your goals (that of course align to your roles) that leads you to create plans for action. Depending on what Quadrant these tasks fall within you will either schedule or delegate. Finally for each day you will develop your MITs and schedule accordingly.
Here’s a quick long-term / short-term organizing recap:
- Long-Term Organizing: Mission Statement > Roles > Goals
- Weekly Organizing: Roles > Goals > Plans > Schedule or Delegate > Daily MIT
Great work before everything else
This of course is already captured within MITs but it also expands beyond just 2-3 MITs. You want to do your most meaningful, creative work at the beginning of the day (or based on your most productive hours), and leave “reactive work” (like responding to email or messages) for later. Focus while you’re fresh — tackle the projects that require “hard focus” during your most productive time. Which, for me, is early in my day. For most of us, self-control, and our ability to resist distractions, declines as the day goes on.
Ultradian rhythms
Like anything in nature, humans run in cycles. Ultradian rhythms are 90-120 minute cycles that run within the 24-hour circadian day. Research suggests that our day is driven by these cycles and affect how alert and productive we are. Regardless if you are a Maker or a Manager, schedule your tasks for each day in 90-120 minute focus sessions. If you are a Maker and need to block an entire half-day for deep focus on a project, schedule two 120 minute blocks together and take a short break in-between to stay energized. It also helps to commit to working on your projects at consistent intervals, ideally the same or similar intervals and times each day. This allows you to build creative muscle and momentum over time (see associate triggers below).
Time boxing
This is hands-down, the most effective time management and productivity tool. Ditch the to-do lists (at least for your daily/weekly work plan) and convert them into a calendar system. This can be a physical, printed calendar/planner or your digital calendar system. I personally love the ease, flexibility and portability of a digital system. What time-boxing allows you to do is effectively defend and create time for the things that truly matter for your work, your mission.
How this works is simple. When a task comes in and its Quadrant is determined, schedule time for it in your calendar right away. That’s it! No more adding it to a list and never getting around to it. You’ve just made the time to complete the task.
One important piece is to ensure the time you’ve booked is uninterrupted, focused time and you respect these blocks of time just as you would any meeting. Be sure to schedule Q2 activities such as time for learning and time for reviewing next week’s goals and schedule.
Do tasks always get completed within that allotted time? No. Many times, especially for larger projects, you will need to reschedule additional time to complete depending on how much time is needed and what is available in your calendar.
An additional productivity tool or hack is color-coding your tasks as you schedule them in your calendar. This is very easy to do within a digital calendar system, but can also be accomplished in a printed planner with highlighters, colored pens, or multi-colored sticky tabs.
There are several ways to approach color-coding your calendar. A great way to start is by first designating a color for both Q1 and Q2 tasks so you can easily judge by quickly glancing at your calendar how much time your are devoting to each. You may also want to leave any “incoming” meetings as a specific color (or the default color for your digital calendar) and use different colors for “your” scheduled tasks. This also gives you a quick tally on how much you are devoting to other peoples priorities and your own. Of course you can use a combination of approaches and also layer on things like using a very noticeable color for urgent or important meetings or tasks, specific colors for reoccurring meetings and a dedicated color for specific projects, teams, personal tasks, etc.
I do still work with “do-to” lists in some fashion. Longer-term goals obviously cannot be scheduled right away so those are tracked separately. I keep an “ideas” list across several disciplines I work within for future ideas (not necessarily goals at this point) that do not need to be scheduled yet, but I do not want to lose track of them. One of these lists is a “priority” list that I know needs to be scheduled via time-boxing, so there is some overlap. I use Trello for my to-do/ideas lists.
Single-tasking
This one is short and sweet. Focus on one task at a time. Multi-tasking is a myth. In order to do great work, we humans must devote our attention to only a single task at a time. This doesn’t include things like brushing your teeth and having a conversation with your roommate or going for a walk while you have a phone call or switching to a new task while you wait for files to upload, but it does include working on two separate projects at the same time or checking email while you’re reviewing a report. Be present and devote your attention fully to the task at hand.
Associative triggers
Establish triggers such as listening to the same music or arranging your desk in a certain way tell your mind it’s time to get down to work. This may sound a little silly but this is how the physiology of our brains work. Over time, you can train your mind and your body to jump right into an activity and be fully prepared by developing associative triggers.
Don’t wait for moods
Show up whether you feel inspired or not. Creativity and your best work show up when you least expect it. This includes once you’ve already settled down into a project, whether you felt like starting it or not.
Kill the background noise
Turn off your phone, email, social networks, any apps, or anything unrelated to your task. Even the presence of background activity (and temptation) can drain your focus and take you off course.
Remove unnecessary communications
In order to allow yourself the necessary time to complete the important tasks you have at hand you need to make the space. An easy way to trim some time off your plate is removing any unnecessary communications that are not contributing to your productivity. Here’s a short list to get you started:
- Email newsletters you never/seldom read
- Email promotions/sales from websites
- Turn off notifications from email and all apps (especially social media) except ones that promote productivity
- Create email filters to automatically organize or archive email that doesn’t need immediate attention
If you’re having trouble keeping your attention focused, inexpensive productivity aids like Cold Turkey, Freedom and RescueTime block the internet and time-wasting apps if you don’t have the willpower to go offline or get away from social media.
Be conscious of your bandwidth. Just say No.
Practice letting go of certain email and social media conversations and saying no to anything that isn’t pushing your mission forward. You also want to ensure you are distinguishing between compulsive and conscious behaviors. Are you acting out of boredom or blind habit when you could be serving a higher goal? There will always be more opportunities than you can actually take on. Come to peace with that and take joy in removing yourself from some conversations, activities and opportunities knowing that you are building more time for what really matters and allowing yourself to be more productive towards your goals.
Develop a reset ritual
Make a ritual of unplugging on a regular basis and turning it into a routine. Turning everything off is like hitting the “reset” button on your mind–it gives you a fresh start. These activities can include things like a quarterly personal retreat where you spend an entire weekend once a quarter unplugged from email, social media, TV, phone calls or even electricity. These can be alone or possibly with your spouse or partner to double as a one on one relationship building opportunity. This could also be a more regular event like a single day a month, a week, or even a half day within a week. And of course developing a daily ritual such as a meditation exercise is great to keep your mind in balance. But an extended period of time, such as an entire day or more, will allow your mind the space to truly reset.
Using these 5 practices in order, and collectively, will put you on a path to developing crucial time management skills allowing you to get organized and maximize your productivity and ultimately your true potential.
- define your purpose
- align your goal setting for success
- get organized by discovering your schedule
- improve time management by prioritizing objectives
- use productivity tools to build your routine for action