How to Organize Your Life and Increase Productivity
Increasing productivity requires you to organize your life in an intentional way. These 5 steps will show you how.
Productivity is defined in many different ways, and though increasing it sounds like a worthy goal, it's not as straightforward when you don't know exactly what the term means. To keep it simple, I define productivity as the level or amount of output you can get from a specific level or amount of input. That's it.
Increasing productivity means being as efficient as possible with your time, energy, money, and other resources, so you can get more from less. Additionally, it's worth noting that this simple definition isn't limited to a professional context. It is relevant to all areas of your life, not just work or business.
Your ability to increase productivity requires a change in mindset as well as a process for planning, monitoring and recalibrating how you exert your personal resources.
External stimuli often dictate how we plan and navigate our day. Think about it. It's likely that the demands of your business and work priorities, family obligations, and social commitments add a plethora of complexities to your daily schedule. I also bet that you put pressure on yourself to make it all work and assume the worse if you fail to do it all. But have you ever considered that you may have a choice in how your day flows?
This choice does not require you to download dozens of productivity apps or pack every hour of your calendar with a task. In fact, the only requirement is that you commit to being more intentional in what you want out of the day and more thoughtful in planning. I’ve outlined a step-by-step method you can employ for better managing your resources and seeing bigger and better outcomes as a result.
Step 1: Have Purpose
Operating under a strong sense of purpose helps you hone in on what matters most, simplify decision-making and focus your resources in pursuit of relevant, well-thought-out goals. Your purpose is the combination of your overarching life vision and associated core values. It's the why behind all you do, and the mechanism that helps you navigate life with clarity and conviction.
Lack of productivity can often be linked to a lack of purpose or vision. Because if you don't even know why you are doing what you do, how can you do it well? Another reason why purpose is so important is that it helps you prioritize. Greg McKeown, author of the book "Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less" clarifies the definition of priority:
When the word priority came into the English language in the 1400s, it was singular. Think for a moment: What did it mean? The answer is the prior or very first thing. What’s interesting is it stayed singular for the next 500 years. It wasn’t until the 1900s that we came up with the pluralized term and started using the word priorities.
Do you ever start the day without assessing what matters the most? If you do take the time to consider what matters do you find it hard to edit, often ending up with a laundry list of "priorities"? If you want to own your day, instead of it owning you, you must exercise awareness, clarity, and focus (these three elements are the trifecta of purpose).
First, you need to be aware of yourself—your desires and ideal lifestyle and how that might manifest in a typical day. From there comes clarity—about what you do and do not care about. Clarity, then, allows you to focus so you can prioritize and efficiently allocate your time, effort, and resources to what matters most.
Step 2: Set Priorities
Having a clear vision alone won't make you more productive. You also have to be disciplined in your pursuit of purpose. This means getting good about prioritizing what actually matters to you so you don't squander your resources on nonessential people, activities, or things. I recommend using the Eisenhower Matrix to set your priorities. This principle gives you a framework for easily denoting what is worth your time and what is not:
Important and Urgent — do first
Important but Not Urgent — do later
Not Important but Urgent — delegate
Not Important and Not Urgent — eliminate
Items listed under #1 should be given a designated time to address more immediately. While items listed under #2 are to be scheduled sometime later but in the near future. Items under #3 are for outsourcing or automating if you see a repetitive pattern. Finally, items under #4 are to be completely eliminated (the best part of the exercise).
Once you are aware of your priorities, you have to be mindful of situations, people, or habits that threaten your ability to stay on track — be it personal procrastination, an intrusive boss, or even a draining volunteer role you accepted without thinking of the implications. These major time consumers can completely derail your ability to adhere to a well-thought-out schedule. So it's important to put a plan in place (upfront) for how you're going to handle them.
If you need to have a candid conversation with your boss about her tendency to throw random work on your plate, then do it. If you have to graciously pull out of that social activity because it interferes with more meaningful interests you want to devote time to, then do it. This is the point where you have to take bold inspired action so that the passage of your schedule is much more aligned with your ideal day.
Step 3: Plan Better
So you know what to prioritize, now what? You need to lay out a plan for when and how you are going to do what. Consider this plan a roadmap that keeps you aware of and focused on the important tasks at hand. My primary method of planning is using natural transitions in the day to break down my schedule into manageable sections of time where I am likely to be doing the same types of activities (I call this modularizing).
Creating a modular structure entails keeping similar activities grouped within pre-determined time blocks so you can be more efficient and focused. You can use these blocks to your advantage by evaluating your priorities and other demands and considering the best time in the day to situate them. For example, if you work an office job, perhaps your day naturally breaks down like this:
Morning (6-8)
Commute (8-9)
Work (9-1)
Lunch (1-2)
Work (2-6)
Evening (6-10)
Sleep (10-6)
In this case, maybe it makes more sense to try and schedule all meetings in the morning so you can use the afternoon to work on action items uninterrupted. Being focused in the afternoon might allow you to make more progress and stop work from spilling over into the evening so you can actually get a few errands and personal tasks done before going home.
That then means you're less likely to be up late at night losing sleep because you’re panicking about the many things left incomplete. This is just an example but do you see the logic? Having some kind of structure will yield more favorable results than haphazardly navigating the day in no particular order.
It sounds overly idealistic until you actually execute this method and see the benefits of putting tasks in their proper place. If your day is not strategically charted out then you risk being all over the place, exerting energy inefficiently, and never feeling satisfied with the outcomes of your efforts.
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Step 4: Take Notes
A simple but effective note-taking process is a pertinent part of your productivity plan. Notes help you organize your thoughts, jot important reminders, document real-time happenings and review what does and does not work with your plan.
It's hard to be productive if you can't think clearly. So the main purpose of note-taking is to relieve your mind of having to recall all of the information you must process each day. Another benefit is that it can be used as a ledger to help you track how you are spending your time.
There are many major and minor activities we need to engage in to make it through the day. However, the non-essentials shouldn't be given more energy than the priority. For example, spending an exorbitant amount of time getting ready in the morning is an issue for a lot of people.
If you stare blankly at your closet for 30 minutes overwhelmed by the myriad of subpar options then you're allowing a small activity to get you frazzled before you even make it out the door. In this case, creating a capsule wardrobe or even wearing a daily uniform could be a great solution.
Even if it's not stressing over what to wear, it may be deliberating too long on what to eat for lunch or wasting time on social media. There are probably inconsequential things that you give more time and consideration to than they deserve. Taking a moment during the day to reflect, via note-taking or journaling, helps you identify and eliminate these routine busters.
There are a plethora of note-taking techniques to choose from but no definitive studies on whether one is better than the others, so don’t overthink it. Likewise, use any note-taking tool that works for you. I use the Simplenote digital app and notebooks by Smythson.
Step 5: Be Consistent
If there is a cardinal rule when it comes to productivity, it's that consistency matters. Starting then stopping and changing course requires significant amounts of reserves. If you engage in this type of bad procrastination too often you could blow through your resources without making any progress.
Another enemy of consistency is not being able to resist the urge to fill breaks and downtime with a task, activity, or meeting — or allowing someone else to. If you jam-pack every available minute you can't perform at your best. Your ability to stick with your daily routine means ensuring that it is actually feasible.
To be blunt, it doesn't matter how smart or able-bodied you are. Your task can't be reached or tasks completed without consistency. Of course, consistency can be hard to achieve, which is why I am an advocate of accountability.
A daily routine is really a healthy habit builder — through repetition you engage in consistent patterns that move you toward the attainment of your goals. If you find yourself failing at building this particular habit, use a friend, family member, colleague, or coach as an accountability partner which is proven to increase the odds of reaching your goals.
