By Andy Core
Are you the unwitting victim of today's demanding work culture and bad habits, bound by the tyranny of your to-do list? You are not alone. As you go through life, you develop habits and routines that you think will help you succeed. The problem is, many of those patterns probably don't work for you personally. What's productive for your coworker may not work well for you, or a strategy that was effective five years ago may no longer work."
The good news is that you can change habits and patterns that don't serve you. Here are some tactics that will help you start thriving immediately.
Figure out what's doable in a day. Turning your whole life around is too big a goal. You can't sustain that many major changes at once. Instead, simply change your day. Reengineer your routine a little bit at a time, one day at a time, cutting out a small stressor here, and adding in a more productive habit there.
To do this, set realistic boundaries. Create goals that can be accomplished in the space of a day. Remember, nearly all problems, challenges, and needs are best faced if they are brought down to the scale of what can be done right now by taking on one small piece of a difficult situation.
Get big things done before 9:00 a.m. (instead of snoozing, procrastinating, and lurking at the water cooler). What you do first matters. Have you ever noticed how your morning sets the tone for your whole day? As Sir Isaac Newton famously said, "Objects in motion tend to stay in motion." So if an object (you) gets a groggy, frustrating start, you'll probably feel sluggish and behind the eight ball all day long. However, if you start your day with positive and productive ideas, actions, thoughts, and feelings, you're likely to gain momentum throughout the day.
Do first, then know (not the other way around). Most people believe that the knowledge that something is important should make them want to do it. But in reality, that's not the case. So, why don't we do what we know we should do? If we know spending less time on Facebook will make us more productive, why won't we just commit to spending an hour less on the site each day? If we know setting aside 30 minutes to walk or jog each day will make us healthier, why aren't we jumping up off the couch right now?
Studies show that knowledge alone usually isn't enough to impact our desires. In fact, the opposite is true. First, you must do something—like bite the bullet and put on your workout clothes! If you experience positive feelings, attitudes, and results because of your action, you will learn that whatever you just did is good, and you'll want to do it again, and again, and again. Over time, you'll develop a new habit, and you'll become an evolved person.
Own up to your junk hours. Junk hours are a little like junk food. While they provide short-term pleasure, they contribute to long-term imbalance and exhaustion. For instance, junk hours might include chasing rabbit trails on the Internet, shooting the breeze with colleagues, checking email in order to avoid doing other work, or even attending an unnecessary meeting.
To maximize each day, you need to own up to your junk hours. Identify when you're going through the motions of work, versus when real work is being done. Don't be ashamed that your junk hours exist, because everybody needs to take breaks and shift gears. Your task now is to exchange your low-value activities for ones that build greater health and value into your workday.
Instead of adding to your to-do list, build a new pattern. Maybe you're thinking, Sure, I'd like to change my day, but the thought of adding a boatload of items to my already out-of-control to-do list makes me want to crawl back into bed. I can't handle any more tasks and responsibilities! If that sounds familiar, take a deep breath. The changes that build momentum are rooted in decisions, not additional tasks.
To build a productive new pattern into your life, you usually won't have to add new tasks to your day. Instead, you'll simply do what you are already doing, or want to do, in a way that becomes habitual. For instance, if you want to wake up an hour earlier so that you can jump-start the day, you simply have to change the time your alarm rings and the time you go to bed. If you want to be more productive at work, you might have to replace aimless procrastination with scheduled breaks. In both cases, you're changing the way you perform existing tasks, not adding new ones.
Start with one thing. Then add another. Then another. Don't take on more than you can handle. Break each goal down to its smallest components; then pick one of them to tackle. Pursue this change until it becomes a habit; then move on to the next one. Start with one thing and don't add another until you're ready. Positive motion creates positive emotion.
Make a big-box checklist. It's a given that you have a to-do list. Maybe it's on paper, on your smartphone, or just in your head, but you have one. It's also highly likely that your list isn't as useful as it could be. Too often, you get stuck doing the urgent instead of the important. The solution: Make an actual, on-paper checklist each afternoon for the following day or each morning. Put a box by each task—the more important that task is for you to complete that day, the bigger its box should be. While prioritizing your daily list by the size of the boxes on it may sound simplistic, it's a visual reminder of those items you need to focus on.
Think about it so you don't have to think about it. We all have tasks and obligations that eat up a lot of our time—those that we find difficult and frustrating, or both. Figure out where these areas are for you and commit to learning a new pattern. Learning new patterns can initially be tedious and laborious. But once they've taken hold—often in three weeks or less—they'll speed up your performance, streamline your effort, and lower your stress. By putting in some thought about problem areas now, you'll save yourself from having to think about them later.
Infuse meaning into your work. Doing meaningful work does not mean that you will love every second of it. Meaning can simply be recognizing what you enjoy about your work. With that understanding, though, you'll be more motivated, productive, and satisfied.
- Focus on what gives you the greatest joy and meaning at work; be able to define it.
- Reflect on how you are making a difference at work and through your work; be able to give examples.
- Reflect on the meaning of your work as it relates to your core values.
- Then, seek to increase what you enjoy!
You'll find the mundane, routine chores and the not-so-exciting aspects of your work become easier to do and get completed more quickly if you have a strong focus on what you do find exciting, rewarding, or fulfilling.
Seek to serve, not shine. To some extent, it's human nature to look out for Number One. We all want to rack up accomplishments, receive accolades, and garner recognition. But in many situations, the desire to shine can cause you to get in your own way. Just think of the overeager salesman whose desire to exceed his quota makes him come off as pushy. Instead of convincing you to buy his product, his self-serving attitude just makes you want to cut the meeting short.
Ironically, the key to shining is putting others first. People who channel their efforts toward making others' lives easier are nearly always respected, included, and considered valuable. When you help others reach their goals and become their best, you'll usually find that the same things happen to you.
Fill up your energy bank account so you can make withdrawals when you need them. Throughout life, circumstances arise that are beyond our control. You may experience a major illness, lose a loved one, or be forced to relocate. You may have to occasionally work long days and go without sleep. The list goes on. It's because of these out-of-our-hands circumstances that we must all focus on controlling what we can.
Get enough sleep; eat nutritiously; exercise when time permits. That way, when you do find yourself needing to push the limits, you'll have a healthy margin of energy, motivation, or whatever to draw on. Manage what you can manage as often as possible in order to compensate for what you cannot manage.
Forget the future. The future can be an inspiring thing, but it can also be a scary and misleading one. What-ifs and doomsday thinking can plunge you into paralyzing anxiety, and making incorrect assumptions can send you down the wrong path.
Forgive yesterday so you can work on today. Most successful, hardworking people are often hard on themselves to an unproductive level. They are their own worst critics and spend valuable time lingering on mistakes and slip-ups. Long after the mistake has been made, they beat themselves up relentlessly instead of spending their time in a more productive state.
Treat yourself with the same compassion and generosity you'd extend to another person who'd messed up or fallen short of a goal. Follow the two-hour rule I learned from one of my past coaches: When you have a bad performance or make a mistake, you have two hours to pout, scream, cry, wallow, or do whatever you think will help you deal with the disappointment. But when 120 minutes have passed, it's time to start moving forward again.
By making small changes in how you approach your day, you can begin to take back your to-do list and accomplish the big goals that will really help you thrive.
Andy Core is the author of Change Your Day, Not Your Life: A Realistic Guide to Sustained Motivation, More Productivity, and the Art of Working Well (©2014, Wiley).