Switching between tasks

• The processes, policies, and busy work gets in the way.
• Most jobs don’t have a clear goal.
• Feedback can be inadequate.
• The pace of work has increased, and it’s hard for people to spend time thinking deeply.
• Your skills aren’t well matched to the challenges you are allowed to pursue.
• There’s a lack of control over interruptions or when and how you work.
• The job doesn’t push you out of your comfort zone.

... to push your mind beyond its comfort zone. Flow happens when we get a bit out of our comfort zone. Too much, and you get anxious; Too little and you get bored.

You need to know your physical or emotional limitations and consciously push past them.

• Personal productivity is not about all-round efficiency, and it is wrong to think about your input as that of a machine in a factory unit.
• This is further complicated by our mistaken assumption that being in demand means that we are doing a splendid job.
• We blur our all boundaries between our work and personal life and every minute of the day is to be kept busy as we rush to attend every meeting, cross out every task from the to-do list or to answer every email that we get.

Our brain starts to favour small tasks that give a false impression of productivity (woohoo! I just sent out fifty emails!) while we neglect the large, complex but meaningful tasks.

This is known as the completion bias.

You need to find out just where your time is going currently. You can use a pen and paper, a spreadsheet, or an app to visualize where you spend most of the hours in your day.

• Block your time for specific types of work, not individual tasks.
• Block your time for core work like coding, designing or writing, for shallow work like daily tasks and maintenance, for meetings and emails, and fill it with frequent breaks to replenish yourself.
• Give yourself space between blocks so that you can decompress and keep your energy levels high.

• Some of our daily to-dos should not require a constant daily effort and could be optimized further. Look for such habits and if the daily effort is straining you, look for other innovative solutions.

• Time and Energy are limited resources, and as we grow, our habits may become obsolete. We could use the same time and energy to explore new and better options.

• It is a good idea to pay attention to where we spend our time and see if there is something we do daily but have outgrown long ago.

Being consistent can also lead to burnout and lack of growth, and to be creative and innovative, we sometimes need a break from our daily activity. When we stop and do something new, we start to be part of a creative process, instead of simply repeating the same thing every day.

The key is to not rely on a rigid consistency but to be resilient enough to withstand any breaks. Our resilient habits are usually the old ones and have some psychological rewards while involving some external accountability. 

• Hyper-organized, detail-driven.
• You thrive on deadlines. 
• You have every appointment and reminder possible in your calendar.
• Your biggest pet peeve is when people are running perpetually late. 

Productivity Boost: Batch tasks. Grouping similar tasks together lets you get into a flow state and not waste any time switching between tasks.

• A natural-born facilitator.
• You’re highly intuitive and communicative. 
• You do your best work with people and on teams, and you understand instinctually what needs to get done to wrap up a project. 

Productivity Boost: You need to intersperse solo work with group work. Spending the entire day holed up in an office will actually backfire.

Capture everything on a Master List and then break it down by monthly, weekly, and daily goals.

1. Start by making a master list—a document, app, or piece of paper where every current and future task will be stored. 
2. Once you have all your tasks together, break them down into monthly, weekly, and daily goals.
3. When setting your priorities, try not to get too “task oriented” - you want to make sure you’re prioritizing the more effective work.

The matrix is a simple four-quadrant box that answers that helps you separate “urgent” tasks from “important” ones:

• Urgent and Important: Do these tasks as soon as possible
• Important, but not urgent: Decide when you’ll do these and schedule it
• Urgent, but not important: Delegate these tasks to someone else
• Neither urgent nor important: Drop these from your schedule as soon as possible.

If the effort to keep remembering a task is more than just getting it out of the way now, then do it.

• Fixing things is empowering. Our confidence increases or decreases based on our ability to make progress. 
• Any progress builds momentum (and your mood): No matter how small the task is, crossing it off your to-do list gives you a boost of momentum and enhances your mood.
• Small steps turn into habits: When a task is easy to do and quickly completed, it’s much easier to turn it into a habit.

• We think more work should equal more output: we see productivity not as doing more with less. But simply doing more.
• We’re afraid of being “left behind”:  not only could we miss out on some important conversation, but we worry that we’ll be left behind.
• Work has become a larger part of our identity: we feel personally connected to the work we do. Taking time away opens up all sorts of questions that can be hard to face. 

It is a play on the term “deliberate practice” and it means engaging with restful activities that are often vigorous and mentally engaging.

It is not a continuation of work, but a way to find activities that let you recharge from your workday, while still being mentally productive.

• you tend to work on the right things. Effective single-tasking requires planning. Starting your day without a plan is just asking for distraction and inefficiency.
• you accomplish more in less time with less stress: Intentionally focusing on one task at a time has been proven the most efficient way to move through your to-do list.

1. Cutting out distractions.
2. Make a single-tasking plan you’ll actually stick to.
3. Dealing with unavoidable distractions.
4. Getting back on track when you’ve fallen off the single-tasking band wagon.

While you’ve likely heard that it’s physically impossible to do two things at once, that rule really only applies to tasks that require the same cognitive resources. If you can find ways to combine two tasks that are different enough - like listening to an educational podcast while making your commute, practicing for a presentation while getting your miles in on the treadmill, or brainstorming article ideas while doing the dishes - multitasking can actually serve to your benefit.