My Productivity Hack
When you have to juggle many things, when there is a lot on your To-Do list, when you feel like you are drowning in work, it can get extremely overwhelming. We may get stuck in a loop of procrastination. The longer our list gets, the less we are able to focus and work on one of them. I have been there too. Especially in the past one and a half years. I have managed to evolve a productivity hack for myself in such situations.
A lot of times, what I noticed is that just starting and being able to take the first step is the hardest part. That first step is where the anxiety sets in, your mind races to the next few things that are also due. You begin to second-guess yourself, if what you’re going to do now will make you miss something else that is important. Analysis paralysis. Does this hit home? Feel like you’ve been there too often? You aren’t alone. Most people fall into this and end up having to push themselves extra hard before deadlines with multiple sleepless nights to complete their work.
There are two things I read which inspired me to come up with some simple hacks. A line from a Sherlock Holmes story that really resonated — “A change of work is the best rest”. Another was an article I read about the 10 minute rule — saying if something can be done in 10 minutes, do it now.
Get Started
The first part of my hack leads from the 10 minute rule. As soon as some work is up on the horizon, I do the bare minimum needed to get started. For a report, create a Word document and type out the title. Any initial thoughts I have, I type out in the doc, even as points or incomplete sentences. In case of Excel files needing analysis, just create the file and put in available information. For presentations, create a PPT with a title slide. This first step is the hardest to do. After that is out of the way, you’ll be surprised how easy it is to make progress.
Keep Switching
It’s very common to have multiple deadlines and work due. It is not humanly possible to keep doing the same thing for a long time. Our mind naturally gets tired of working and producing ideas. I take this as a cue to switch between tasks. I usually have multiple files and tabs open on my laptop. So, an Alt+Tab is all it takes for me to move to something else. We need to take breaks from everything and do something to relax. But for the times when try as we might, we aren’t able to focus and make progress, this switch to another task can work wonders.
These two things have been simple to do for me, tried and tested in my life. Each of us is different, we have our own ways of working. But maybe either of these two things could be effective for you as well.