Where I find my productivity

Being productive is very important to me, always has been. If I don't have a good list of accomplishments by the end of my day, I start to feel anxious and angry. Two emotions that don't suit me very well. I attribute this mentality to my parents, two people who are obsessively neat (not a bad vice to have) and are borderline workaholics. Although I've had a couple people in my life who have tried to convince me that these are bad attitude to have, they've never been all that successful. But I digress, this post isn't about why I am the way I am, it's about how I 'trick' myself into being my most productive.


The Importance of Planning

By far the most important thing for me is to plan my day. Without a plan, I'm about as useful as half a screwdriver. But is one plan enough for me? Goodness no. I will, at the very least, have two plans for my day. One will be my work day plan and one for my evening.

Schedule It!!!

A simple to-do list is not enough to keep me motivated. So as I create my to-do list for the day then, I assign a time value to each item. It's important to be as fair and firm as possible in this matter. You want to make sure you give yourself about a 10%-15% buffer, but not too big of a buffer, else Parkinson's Law takes over. By doing this, you can determine how much you should be able to do in a day.

So now you've got a shiny new to-do list with a reasonable time estimate. Time to schedule. Just like booking meetings in a day, I place my to-do items in a calendar. Order is extremely important. I put the least desired task first thing in the morning, when I have the most ambition. The most interesting tasks go at the end day. Whatever tasks are left, I'll schedule in order of descending time required.


Rewards


Rewarding myself is very important as well. For instance, if I schedule a very undesirable task in my day, I'll always put something fun or interesting right after it. Obviously, this reward will vary from person to person. I doubt you find learning about the Oracle Cost Based Optimizer as interesting as I do.


Conclusion

You may have noticed a pattern in what I've written. Everything revolves around my personality. Making yourself as productive as possible means knowing who you are and working with that. This is not for the faint of heart. It requires paying attention to how you behave under specific conditions over long periods of time. This may take months to get right, but if you can manage it, you'll find yourself getting more done than ever and even have more time for the things you enjoy.