If you're new here, Welcome! To learn more about what this site is all about click here [link].

I am a small business Conversation Consultant and public speaker that uses the power of the internet to leverage your success. Productivity in Context is a web magazine focused on Productivity and tools for organizing. Make this your headquarters for improving your life and work through increased mindfulness, education, and workflow practices.

Subscribe by E-mail for updates on: Productivity methods, Lifestyle innovation, and the collaborative design of the next-generation personal knowledge management system.

Click Here for an overview of the content. Please take a look at our sponsors. (Hosting isn't free...)
Please contact me via e-mail: stephen @ hdbizblog dot com

I get a handful of e-mails every week with questions about how to get started with GTD or other productivity practices, so I thought I would just do a post on it, and improve productivity for two people at once!

When you realize that your level of organization and workflow just aren’t cutting it anymore, there is only one thing left to do: Try something new.

This can be difficult, especially when you realize that there are so many products and books that purport to tell you how to get organized. You can make lists and fill out worksheets and buy planner pages and … the list goes on and on. This is what you need to say to yourself:

It’s not you, it’s me.

The number one piece of advice that I give is to take a look at how you normally spend your day. No matter what, you are going to have to make some changes to your ‘everyday routine’ because it is obviously not working. This evaluation of your routine is handled in 3 steps:

1. How do I really spend my time?
2. What is truly important to me?
3. How can I make my commitments more effective?

For step 1 I want you to get a blank piece of paper and a pen to carry with you all day. You are going to create an Activity Log, a blank piece of paper divided into three columns:

Time, Activity, and Interruption.

I want you to have this paper with you for an entire day, recording your actions and activities, according to the following instructions:

Are you Spending or Investing your time?

Every time you start a new activity, make an entry on the log sheet. When you get to the office and pour a cup of coffee, write it down. When you check your voice mail, write it down. This may seem pointless or silly, and it will interrupt your work. Do it anyway and do it for the entire day. Be diligent in recording each new activity. You don’t have to stop to record every call you make, for example, just record “Returned 4 phone calls”. Do avoid having large blocks of time entered as a single activity.

Under the heading of “Time,” enter the time you start the new activity, to the minute. Under the “Activity” heading, enter a brief description of what you’re doing. Under “Interruption,” make a note if the activity felt like an interruption of your time, such as an incoming phone call while you are writing a proposal. These entries are purely subjective.

Tracking your day like this will allow you to see exactly what it is that you have been doing, so be honest and disciplined about it. It is very likely that you will be surprised at how different it is from what you think that you have been doing.

This tool will allow you to track the various interruptions that you experience, and when. As a side-note, I recommend that when you do this exercise, put the completed Activity Log in your Tickler File for a date two weeks later and do it again then. This will give you a baseline for tracking your improvement in maintaining workflow, and eliminating the interruptions if possible.

Time for Review

For step 2 you will look over the activities and interruptions that you recorded with a highlighter in your hand. Mark the entries that you consider to be “important”, and make a list of them on a second sheet of paper. Then mark the list of the “unimportant” or “interruption” entries with a different color and list these on a third sheet. You are going to keep these two sheets, Important and Interruptions, in your organizer for the next two weeks so that you can be reminded of which activities are priority work and which of them you are working on eliminating.

Once you take the first step in understanding how you spend or invest your time, you are ready to take the next step into improved productivity and workflow.

Put it into Practice

For step 3 you will need to get yourself out of bed one-half hour earlier than normal for two weeks. Write this in your calendar and make a commitment to keep this appointment.

Invest this extra time, not to surf the internet or check e-mail, but to look over your list of Important ativities and Interruptions. Create a basic plan for your day that maximizes the time spent on the Important activities, and minimizes the potential for Interruptions. This basic plan will enable you to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of your daily commitments.

Examples

Do you get a lot of phone calls in the early afternoon, when you are working on paperwork? Think about changing the time that you go to lunch, so these calls go to voice-mail. Then you can decide which calls are important, and the order that they should be returned.

Consider checking your e-mail only twice per day. Set aside an hour or so for that activity alone. Turn off your alerts, so that the beeping or the little pop-up windows do not distract you from your workflow.

Consider blocking those interrupting phone calls.If you have an assistant who can take your calls, consider setting aside an hour in the morning or afternoon for them to answer/screen all of your calls. This time can be used for intensive knowledge-work or concentration. Many times your assistant will be able to resolve the call without your assistance, pointing the caller in the right direction.

Say Goodbye to the Old You

Making a clean break with your routine can be a big help in creating new practices that allow for greater productivity, creativity, and a much more pleasant day. As always, I appreciate your Comments.

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/5twzvn. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen