personal productivity is maximizing results you achieve with the time and energy you have. In its essence, personal productivity is learning to rank and ignore.
Step 1 – Plan. Before you start, you need to figure out what you want to achieve. Figure out what is the end goal and what matters the most to achieve that. This is essential for the upcoming prioritizing and even more, ignoring.
Step 2 – Capture. Second, make sure you have everything you need to do in your system. Write the things down works well. Write down everything you think you need to do, everything someone else asks you to do, etc.
Step 3 – Ignore. Next, shorten the list of stuff you need to do. Look at the end goal(s) you figured out at step 1. If the thing does not take you closer to those end goals, cut the thing from your list.
Step 4 – Organizing. Organize the things on your list to projects (based on the different end goals). This will help you prioritize the tasks.
Step 5 – Prioritizing. After you have shortened your list, it’s time to prioritize the list. Look at your projects, figure out what is the most important one and rank the different tasks based on results they bring (= how much closer they take you to the end goal).
Step 6 – Do. After you have your shortened, prioritized list of the most important tasks you have to do to get closer to your end goals – start doing. Do the most important task. If you have more time, take the next one and so on.
Summary. The better you come at ignoring stuff that doesn’t matter and doesn’t get you any closer to your goals, less things you have to do. Learn to ignore and rank and your productivity will increase a lot. Remember – it’s not about doing more, but doing the right things instead.
If you’re interested in reading more about doing less but achieving more, start from the part 1 of my personal productivity series at Zemalf.com
