Focus on the small improvements
Doing more in less time is not the ultimate solution to productivity. It's the path to burnout.
Productivity rests more on small improvements. By focusing on the small things, the big things will take care of themselves.
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Most people perform a combination of varied small tasks in a day. There may be many small improvements you could make to your workflow or environment to get more done.
Step one is finding out what those things are. Involve your peers or your manager if you need help with this.
Every week, choose one thing from your list and focus on it.
- Think of ways to improve this one thing.
- Experiment, and see what works.
- Talk about this one thing with your manager and ask for feedback.
The goal is to find ways to improve that small part of your work.
Communicate how the small changes helped you to improve. After a week focusing on this one thing, our natural tendency is to want to share how we did toward our output.
Be sure to talk about the small thing you focused on. It will help reinforce that focusing on the little things consistently over time will produce big results.
Large, abstract goals are intimidating. This is why focusing on smaller areas for improvement can put us in control over our own development.
Instead of an abstract goal like "becoming a better manager", you could use an actionable step like, " I want to devote one hour a week to preparing more for my 1:1s with my team."
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None of us can get creative in short 15-minute bursts of work sandwiched between a mandatory meeting and a sales team call. It is also a myth that people work for 8 to 10 hours a day.
Most people are productive in sporadic periods of time, like 15 minutes, followed by an interruption, then for 20 minutes, followed by a commitment/obligation/meeting and so on.
We need to align our schedules with our goals and create a strategy that helps us focus on deep work.
They make big goals seem manageable and achievable.
They also help you to move closer to where you want to be and a constant source of motivation.
The most successful, busy people in the world dedicate at least 5 hours a week to deliberate learning.
The 5-Hour Rule is the most critical practice we can all adopt for long-term career success. However, almost no-one takes it as seriously as they should.