Productivity Gremlins are eating my lunch
I know you sympathize: it's the time of year when life seems to come to a standstill, flu germs strike down our colleagues one by one and we just want to crawl under a blanket for aAnd I am left wondering: where did my lunch go?
When I realize at 2 p.m. that I haven't eaten (and by "realize" I mean someone points it out to me, usually because I've got a spaced-out look on my face due to carb withdrawl), I know that what I call "productivity gremlins" are nearby. Rarely do I miss a meal because I'm that busy...it's more often that I'm not that focused.
Productivity gremlins sneak up on us in a lengthy phone call, the "urgent" problem that isn't really urgent, a colleague who has a lot of time on her hands to talk (and so should you, apparently), the email that takes twice as long because you can't find the right words...you get the idea.
When this happens, I'm frustrated that I'm not managing my time. The more time I lose, the further behind I get...and the further behind I get, the less motivated I am. And the gremlin laughs and laughs.
You might be expecting tips and secrets to increasing your productivity. If so, I'm going to disappoint. Instead, I want to suggest something radical: allow yourself some slack. Sometimes we need to slow down, reassess, do nothing. We need to recognize that we, like all of nature, ebb and flow. If we allow ourselves a bit of room to slack, to be briefly lazy, our productivity will be better in the long-run.
When our to-do list stacks up but motivation lags, try to appreciate getting only a few things done. I know - your list is full of things that need to get done. But is it, really? By taking a couple of days to allow yourself to slack you will find your energy and focus is renewed for getting many things done. Sometimes just getting by now is exactly what we need to excel later.
New York Times writer John Tierney published a great article this month on allowing ourselves to slack (click here to read it). In this article he champions "positive procastination." My kudos to a writer who would even suggest such a crazy idea, much less back it up with research. Bravo, Mr. Tierney!
And for those of you who need to vanquish the gremlin completely, check out the productivity blog "Getting Things Done." There are great tidbits on increasing your time management and productivity skills.
And now I'm going to go eat lunch. It's 1 p.m. I'll take it.
A suggestion I read a few months ago has been working well for me, and it's simple. Turn off the clock display on your computer! If you use extensive calendaring reminders, you won't miss important appointments, but you'll subconsciously switch from"time management" to "task management," which works much better. Instead of assigning time allotments (most of which were inaccurate in my case), I just do one task at a time (or a few simple ones at once) until they are complete. It works!
ReplyDeleteObviously, some Projects are time-sensitive, but then it's more about task prioritizing rather than time management. For me at least, I'm having less stress missing artificial deadlines, and just do them one at a time, or until I reach logical stopping points, and then shifting to the next task.
Oddly enough, by not focusing on Time, I seem to have a bit more of it!
I like the idea of task management...I need to switch to that!
Delete