Planning vs Doing

Rather than trying to work flat-out, break down your day into a series of work-sprints with a short rest period after each session.

Set a timer for 25 min and focus exclusively on your work for that time, take a 5 min break, and repeat.

Some people find that taking a 5 min break destroys their flow. But it does help to break long complex tasks into a series on manageable sprints.

The 2-minute rule is a strategy for quickly assessing and taking action on small tasks so they don’t take up too much mental energy.

Ask yourself if a task is going to take you 2 minutes or less. If so, just do it.

Productivity is directly related to your energy level.

Find your most productive hours — the time of your peak energy — and schedule Deep Work for those periods. Do low-value and low-energy tasks (also known as shallow work), such as responding to emails or unimportant meetings, in between those hours.

Before going to bed, spend 5 minutes writing your to-do list for the next day. These tasks should help you move towards your professional and personal goals.

You’ll be better prepared mentally for the challenges ahead before waking up and there won’t be any room for procrastination in the morning. As a result, you’ll work faster and smoother than ever before.

Instead of relying on a tool with all the bells and whistles, find out where you’re struggling and what’s essential for you. 

For example, if scheduling is taking you away from product development, then you could use a scheduling tool that uses machine learning to automate most of your scheduling needs. If you’re wasting too much time on email, then consider using a tool to help tame your inbox.

Time management is only useful when you’re aware of your limitations and don't let the system dictate your entire life. 

In other words, when you don’t tread lightly (especially at first), time management can add more stress to your life.

Find a place and schedule in which you will not be disturbed. Concentration and focus must be trained. Having a special time and space to do focused work, will train your brain to do it better.

To maximize productivity, prepare for deep work with deep breathing and visualizing your desired end state. Also, chunk work into 45-minute blocks and do some movement and yoga between those deep work sets.

The more successful you become, the more shiny opportunities offer themselves to you, but not all of them are good for you in the moment.

Always ask yourself, or the people around you, if the pros outweigh the cons by a large margin. If they don’t, refuse the opportunity as it will become a stressful commitment.

Prioritizing tasks at work involves getting all your tasks and commitments in one place.  Take a piece of paper and make a list of everything you need to get done. Questions to help you:

• Do you have commitments to others like your boss, partner, kids, or clients?
• Do you have anything you need to submit? 
• Do you have any financial tasks that need to get done? 
• Do you have any planning that needs to get done? 
• Do you have any administrative tasks? Legal, insurance, staffing, or training?
• Do you have any professional development tasks that need to get done? Training, areas to research, skills to develop, books to read or study, or classes to take?

Find your goals. Without them, it is impossible to prioritize your tasks. Try to set 90-day goals, which is long enough to make meaningful progress. Questions to prompt goals:

• What’s the one thing you could do that makes everything else easier or unnecessary?
• If you were giving advice to someone else in your position, what 1-3 things would you tell them to focus on?
• What do you want to have accomplished over the next five years?

This process walks through a list of prompts in different categories, looking for things you're trying to remember and commitments you've made and gets them out onto paper.

It will help you clear your thoughts and get the distractions out of your head.

Take the time to review the coming week's schedule and organize it into large chunks of time, with tasks grouped by importance and urgency.

It will make it easier to manage your work.

Instead of increasing the number of productive hours, we can focus on getting the right things done in a timely way. We also need to restore and balance ourselves, our colleagues, family and environment, instead of a neurotic or pathological focus on deadlines.

Find out what's truly important to us and use the finite resource of time wisely.

Phantom workload looks like real work but results in massive unproductivity and even conflict in an organization. The pressure to meet unrealistic expectations causes a vicious cycle of further workload.

Leaders need to take a hard look at what is being avoided or not addressed. Facing difficult tasks that were 'swept under the carpet' earlier strengthens them further to make hard decisions and face difficult people and situations.

It's important to have an idea of what your daily priorities are and tasks you need to complete, preferably the night before. 

Also, make sure you prepare in the evening the outfit you're going to wear and the meals for the following day. Doing this will save time in the morning, and reduce decision fatigue.

Take all of your tasks and place them into four quadrants:

• To do first: the most important responsibilities that need to be done today or tomorrow.
• Schedule: important tasks that are not urgent.
• Delegate: essential items that are not important.
• Don't do: tasks that aren't important or urgent. 

"GTD is an organizational system. It doesn't put rules around how you actually do your work. Instead, it focuses on how you capture the work you need to do, organize it, and choose what needs your attention"

You routinely fail to complete tasks because you underestimate the time necessary to finish them.

What to do: Assume as a rule that things will take longer than you expect. Start earlier than you think you need to in order to have a buffer for eventualities. Also, investigate how long past assignments took and why, and identify patterns there that can guide future decisions.

Everything feels like a crisis to you and you spend much of your time putting out fires, leaving you without much time for your biggest priorities.

What to do: Identify your most important goals. List the things you need to accomplish within a given timeframe. Work on other items only if you finish your must-do’s for the timeframe. Also, try setting aside “work blocks” on your calendar to work on your highest priorities, and don’t let yourself schedule over them.