Falling off the productivity wagon
You’ve got your GTD planner, cross off everything on your daily task list, and your email inbox has zero items. Then, it happens.
You fall off the productivity wagon.
It was accidental, maybe you were sick a couple of days, or you were thrown off schedule by an extended vacation. Or maybe you just watched too much TV. It doesn’t matter what the cause is - it just happened.
You stopped being productive and went back to your old, bad habits.
Did I say ‘you’? Excuse me, I meant to say ‘I’. I’ve fallen off the productivity wagon these past two weeks. The reasons behind it? A mixture of some unexpected illnesses, a broken body clock, and the Olympics. Despite these halfway valid reasons (except maybe the Olympics), I’m ashamed of myself. But I’m trying to get back to being productive, and here’s how:
Find and eliminate time sinks. These things (or people) suck your time and attention from the stuff you should be doing (such as work, sleep, recreation, etc.) Most of my time sinks are computer-based, so I had to reinstall RescueTime (which I talked about before). It turns out that I’ve been checking email more often than I should, and I tend to spend too much time on online forums (which I didn’t do before). However, I’ve also gained some offline time sinks, such as leaving the TV on while working.
Once you’ve found your new time sinks, either eliminate them completely or find a way to reduce the time you spend on them.
Check your processes for flaws and possible areas of improvement. It’s also possible that you’ve fallen off the wagon because of flaws in your productivity system or work flow. Are there steps that make you prone to distraction? Do you do a regular review of how productive you are?
I think my main mistake is not doing a weekly review for a long time, so I wasn’t able to scare myself with the realization on how far I’ve lagged behind. Also, I’ve been taking down hand-written notes, but my note-taking system is far from efficient - so I’ll have to research on how to do that better.
Get work done in advance. So that falling off the wagon won’t hurt as much next time, it’s important to be ahead of schedule with work, if it’s possible. This might mean sacrificing a couple of rest days to get some extra work done,but I find that doing this has long term rewards and can allow you to have a more relaxed schedule after.
Eat healthier and exercise. Sickness is often something we can avoid. The key is to take care of our bodies so that they don’t break down on us while we’re in the middle of important projects.
Falling off the productivity wagon may hurt (and be very embarrassing), but it’s perfectly human. The important thing is that we try to get back to our old productive selves once we’ve realized that we’ve fallen.
Image by Elisa Perosio from sxc.hu
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POSTED IN: General work pimps, Working smart
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