Increasing Productivity By Focusing on What’s Important

Do you ever feel like you’ve been busy all day, but didn’t get anything done? Like you did a bunch of stuff, but what you really wanted to get done is still on your to-do list?

In today’s busy world, deadlines tend to drive action. For example, on April 14, the need to file our tax return takes precedence over everything else. The day before (or day of) a loved one’s birthday or other special occasion, we prioritize needing to purchase a gift. When we were assigned a project a month ago and is due this week, our urgency is heightened.

But it’s not just deadlines that cause us to replace our most important tasks. Oftentimes, we work on easier tasks – things we can do quickly and easily. When we complete them, we feel accomplished. At least until the end of the day, when we assess how we did on the larger, more important things we wanted to get done.

Life is busy, and we’re constantly making decisions about what to invest our time and energy doing. The challenge with choosing the easy tasks – the things we might prefer to do because they’re easy and can be done quickly – is that those tasks can fill our schedules for days, weeks, or even months, and the important tasks remain undone indefinitely.

This is an ongoing challenge, even for those of us who are hyper aware of the issue, and super focused on getting important things done. Here are a few tips that help me prioritize getting things done, and hopefully will help you, too.

1. Keep a master to-do list of everything that needs to be done. If we don’t have everything down on paper, or on an Excel spreadsheet, or in an app or software program containing your to-dos, they will be swirling around in your head.  It’s like having a program open on your computer – it’s always in the background taking up bandwidth. When you have everything in a master list, you won’t have to think about or wonder what else needs to be done. If something new arrives, just add it to your list.

2. Next, prioritize your to-do list. I find that many items on my to-do list are things that aren’t super important, and don’t need to be done anytime soon. An example might be a topic of interest I want to research. Sometimes, it doesn’t matter whether this gets done today, or next week, or next year. For these items, which are very low priority, move them to the very end of your list.

Other items are urgent, like the ones I described earlier. If a gift needs to be mailed today, then that would be a high priority. But maybe you can delegate it, and have your assistant or spouse mail the gift. The more we can delegate, the more time and space we create for tasks that only we can do.

Some items on your list are important, but not urgent. These are the tasks that often fall by the wayside, in favor of more time-sensitive tasks. This might include such things as investing quality time with those closest to us, writing a keynote speech, or getting a physical. There’s no consequence in the short run, but the consequences can be great if proper attention is not given to these items.

3. Once your list is prioritized, break your important tasks down into smaller tasks. One of the reasons our important tasks don’t get done is because they’re overwhelming. Writing a book is a huge task. But writing 500 words is more palatable. Running a marathon seems impossible, but running three miles today is doable.

Just like “the way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time,” by breaking large, important tasks into smaller tasks, we can more easily integrate them into our daily task list, and thereby increase the likelihood of completing it.

4. Armed with your master list, which includes important tasks broken down into smaller tasks, the way to maximize productivity is to make a prioritized list every day for what you want to get done. Pick three things. Not one, not five. Three.

At the beginning of each day (or the night before, if you like to plan each night for the following day), answer the question, “What are the three most important things I need to do today?” Write them down, and focus only on those three things.

At first, it won’t be easy. You’ll get distracted by the rabbit holes on the internet or social media. Or by other “to-dos” that pop up that day. Stay focused, though. Three is a small number, and those are your priority items for the day.

If you complete all three things, then add another important item, or two or three. And stay focused. If, at the end of the day, you only completed two, then you have one item remaining for the next day.

Like exercising a muscle, the more you do this, the stronger your routine will become. Prioritizing your tasks using this system will help you not only get more done, but also to reorient your time and energy to the things that are truly important in your life.

Commit to this process for the next three months, and let me know what kind of impact it has on your life. Also, let me know other productivity tools or systems you use that are especially effective.