How to Have A Productive Week
Hello my 9-5ers! *grins from a place that doesn’t require her to work a 9-5 anymore. To be fair, this is not completely for 9-5ers alone, I’m pretty sure you can still use this if you work from home or if you are your own boss as well. Here are 5 tips that I have learned through trial and error from 5 years of working to set myself up for the most productive week possible.
1. Get Your Breaks and Your Rest!
I can’t stress this enough! Breaks still have such a negative vibe and the most important part to being productive is to be “unproductive” with breaks. Breaks are not the antithesis of productivity, they are part of your productivity! Look at it this way: Does it mean you’re not getting enough nutrients and nourishment just because you’re not eating all the time? No, of course not! You take 4 to 6-hour breaks and let the digestive system do its work. That’s the point of rest and breaks. They give your brain time to do its magic in the background. They give your brain time to regroup and recalibrate. They give your brain time to process at deeper levels. So, make sure you’re getting enough sleep, make sure you take enough 10-minute breaks during the day and make sure you hit the gym, do some yoga or take a walk to give yourself a mental break!
2. Find Out What Works for You
A lot of people talk about getting the biggest task on their list done and out of the way as soon as they can. Because this means that you set yourself up for success, that when the task is done, your day is already a success, etc, etc, etc. I find that for me, this usually means I shut down too early and/or that I half-ass my way through the rest of the items in my task list for the day and the week. I also procrastinate because the biggest thing feels too much to handle. I prefer to start with the smallest and simplest tasks on my list because crossing out things in my to-do list gives me satisfaction, and the more items I cross off my list, the more I get motivated to keep going rather than to stop. It helps me build momentum.
3. Avoid Falling Prey to The Pseudo-Productivity Trap
On that note! This is the MOST important thing about productivity. If you can only take one thing away from this post, I sincerely hope it’s this one. Now when I said smallest and simplest tasks just now, for me, it doesn’t mean emails. The last thing you want to do is do things that are pseudo-productive. Let me explain. Have you ever done the following? You can’t focus on the task at hand but you don’t want to be doing nothing so you thought you would finally get around to organising your desk. You then spend the next hour or so clearing out stuff you don’t need anymore, filing, shredding old documents, re-arranging the plants on your desk according to feng-shui and giving everything a good wipe down.
Yeeeaaah? Don’t even worry about it, this is something I did A LOT as well. So, what’s wrong here? Were you being productive? Sure. So, you are productive right? Nope. You were pseudo-productive. Why? Because the task at hand that you couldn’t focus on is probably due today while your desk could have held out cleaning until tomorrow or the day you hit a lull in your work-week. Pseudo-productivity is basically doing things that are productive but at the wrong place and/or wrong time. They suck out your energy resources which could have been put to better use, i.e., tasks that genuinely need your energy for now. Perhaps cleaning your desk could have been something you break down into smaller parts and do during your intermittent breaks rather than in place of the work you are actually supposed to be doing. Because at the end of the day and the week, these pseudo-productive tasks are not going to be the ones that give you a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment. Pseudo-productive tasks are essentially time thieves, and no different from you opening up Chrome to check your email and checking Twitter and Facebook as well because you thought you might as well since you’re here.
4. Minimise Decision Fatigue
If there are small decisions you can get out of the way, get them out of the way as soon as you can. I turn into Chidi Anagonye in a matter of seconds while trying to decide what to eat for breakfast the morning of the day. I have genuinely sat around for almost 2 hours figuring out what to eat for breakfast. So, during my 9-5 not only did I have my breakfast sorted out for the week on Sunday (thank you meal preps!), I also had my lunches and my snacks sorted out. Another thing that makes me indecisive is clothes – so I have my outfits and because I’m a lipstick fiend, the shades of lipstick I will wear with each outfit sorted out as well. Total presidential move, like former President Barack Obama. I take the extra step to arrange them in ascending order of the week so the first thing I see when I open my wardrobe each morning is the outfit for the day. This is to avoid distractions from other outfits and mulling if another outfit would look better. Doing as much as I can to minimise decision fatigue with these things helps me feel more alert and mentally flexible when I’m doing actual work.
5. Tough it Out through Monday
A lot of people will tell you how Monday shouldn’t suck if you love your job but hey! I liked my 9-5 and Mondays SUCKED. So what I did to overcome this was to find things I enjoy and inspire me on Monday to start the day with a good mood. I make sure I search for accounts of people who actually inspire me to look at their content on Instagram rather than scrolling down aimlessly. I watch some comedy and I play my current favourite songs a bazillion times. You gotta do whatchu gotta do to keep your spirits up. I then try to accomplish as many things as possible on Monday. The overall goal is to make sure that I’m sufficiently busy on Monday – to have a little more than what I can handle at a nice, cruising pace but also not too much to the point I just want to shut away from it all. And while I don’t consciously think “Oh, I had a productive Monday, so I better be productive this Wednesday” it somehow sets the tone and the momentum for the rest of the week. I get up on time on Monday, I have a good breakfast, I get to work on time, and I complete three tasks on my list, the I’ll get up on time, have a good breakfast, get to work on time and have a successful week that week. I hit snooze, roll over and wake up in total panic and frazzled 30 minutes later, I have royally messed up my week.
And that’s it! Hopefully, this inspired you to get a move on this Monday and like I said, if anything, I hope you learned about pseudo-productivity at minimum from this post! If you have some favourite methods to be productive over the week that you would like to share, be sure to leave it in the comments below! Meanwhile, I’ll be working hard or hardly working.
Subscribe to my monthly newsletter, "Thendral's Telegraph" here!*
