Simply Productive, Without the Tricks
Download as PPTX, PDF1 like471 views
The document offers productivity tips rooted in psychological insights for achieving goals without relying on apps or overtime. Key strategies include recording accomplishments, limiting email interactions, prioritizing tasks, and embracing boredom to enhance creativity. The advice emphasizes effective time management and the importance of focusing on high-priority projects while reducing distractions.
Simply Productive, Without the Tricks
- 1. You don’t need apps and overtime to accomplish all your goals this year. It just takes a fresh understanding of the human mind and a willingness to accommodate its needs. We sourced our favorite productivity gurus for the latest in workflow hacks. Backed up by psychology, here are our top tips to avoid overwhelm, stoke your creative side, and prioritize for success in 2015.
- 2. Record what tasks you’ve accomplished during each hour or segment of your day. This helps you realistically evaluate what you’ve done as well as giving you that satisfying feeling of accomplishment. Try the “three-sentence rule” – If you are writing an email and it starts to exceed three sentences, save yourself the time and pick up the phone instead. Or try the “one-open rule” – Set the standard that you only open each email you receive ONCE. After opening, determine whether it needs to be replied to, forwarded, or deleted, DO IT, and move on. And write them in black and white where you can see them often.
- 3. Multitasking creates the illusion of productivity, while lessening our ability to retain information and focus on the task at hand. It sounds like a marketer’s worst nightmare, but unsubscribing from email lists that bring you no value does a service to the marketer and your inbox.
- 4. Fit in easier tasks as necessary, but spare greater energy levels for projects that really need it.
- 5. We tend to focus on the obstacles ahead, no matter how unlikely or small they may be. Taking the leap and starting triggers intrusive thoughts about the unfinished project so nagging that you just have to finish what you’ve started.
- 6. Instead of using the first fresh moments of your day planning the hours ahead, make your to-do list the night before. Structure your daily tasks into regular time slots, and share your structure with coworkers. That way they know when you are most likely to be in the zone and can steer clear of your workspace.
- 7. By occupying what little time we have for free thinking, smartphones can be creativity killers. Scientists recommend accepting boredom as a welcome friend to your ideation process. 7
- 8. Sources Did you like this presentation? Read the original and see what else we’re writing about in our Compu-Mail newsletter: Get on the list >> Or find more content on Compu-Mail’s website >> 1. The Psychological Science of Self-Control, American Psychological Association 2. TRENDS in Cognitive Sciences, ScienceDirect 3. The Power of Temptation, Northwestern University 4. The Zeigarnik Effect, Psychwiki.com 5. The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance, APA PsycNET 6. The Science of Creativity, American Psychological Association 7. Is Your Phone Killing Your Creativity, Inc. Magazine