As you know, the little stuff at work can kill the big stuff. In other words, dealing with lots of little tasks all day long can kill your ability to make progress on your bigger accomplishments. The e-mail onslaught, the phone calls, the many small requests for help—if you attack them one right after the other, they can take all day to deal with. It may at first seem you are being responsible when you “just do it,” when you attempt to get them all done. But doing that ends up sinking your more important work.
And according to… Douglas Merrill, author of the recently released book Getting Organized in the Google Era (see review below), these constant changes in tasks also lead to big losses in mental efficiency. That’s because each requires a “context shift”—a change in mental perspective—and that takes time to adjust to. The more context shifts you have each day, the less productive you become. Also, context shifts take energy, so the day becomes more fatiguing—this is yet another source of productivity drain.
So how do you get ahead of this? You need a system of processing your big list of little responsibilities that you get throughout each day, and in a way that allows you to handle them without getting bogged down. Doing so leaves you more time and focus—you can use that to work on your big accomplishments. That’s what the Workday Mastery To-Do List (described in my new book) does. It allows you to quickly sort incoming requests into three urgency zones so it is clear which tasks need attention when. You can then get the urgent things done, perhaps even in one sitting, and then get back to working on your bigger goals. See the YouTube video referenced below for a 7 minute movie on how to create that to-do list easily.
Create Work Appointments on Your Calendar.
Once the Workday Mastery To-Do List is in place, I then recommend you actually schedule time on your calendar to work on your bigger outcomes. In other words, create work appointments every day to focus on your goals and projects. Create those goal appointments first, and well in the future, before your calendar fills up with lower value meetings—and then use that time to do your important work. This is the premise of the long-time classic book First Things First by Stephen R. Covey and A. Roger Merrill; that book recommends you lock your larger and more important activities into your schedule first (your first things first)—then allow the daily minutia to fit in around them; good advice.
So where in the day do you schedule these goal and project appointments? Some people like to use the freshness of the morning to work on the bigger goal or project work. They feel they are most productive then, and it certainly makes sense to take advantage of your optimal energy periods.
Other people (like me) prefer to schedule them in the second half of the day. Why? I like to get the meetings, administrivia, and small tasks done first—to clear the deck—and then change my energy to focus on my larger, creative projects; I then like to keep that focus until I leave for the day. It just feels good to me to see an open runway of dedicated time set for rest of the day. And if I work late it is on something I want to be working on. Your choice on where to schedule your goal work is obviously very personal; but just make sure you do it. Set a couple of hours aside each day for your larger projects; you’ll be glad you did.
