I had a client scheduled today, then woke up feeling like a knife was wedged in my throat. I rescheduled my client, and I found that I had an entire day with no plans!
I briefly imagined jumping on the productivity wheel and producing results for hours and hours. But when you’re sick, it’s hard to want to exist, much less be productive. So I spent the morning laying in bed, the early afternoon making stew, and the entire time feeling vaguely guilty that I wasn’t being optimally productive.
Sound familiar? That nagging feeling that you should be doing something other than what you are – that you’re wasting time, missing opportunities, etc.
It’s toxic to feel this way and it makes it difficult to do anything fully. Here are strategies I’m using to combat the mental nagging:
Keep a Done list: today I made beef stew, packed dried thyme leaves into an old basil bottle, took a walk, cleared out my inboxes, and read a bunch of articles about entrepreneurship, productivity, and creativity. Only one of these was on my To Do list. But crossing one thing off isn’t indicative of all I did. Keep a Done list so you know how much you’ve achieved.
Pick 3 things: keep a big To Do list, sure. Then choose only three items that you will do today, and focus only on those for the day. Having too many items on your list means feeling defeated when you inevitably don’t accomplish them all.
Estimate time: tempted to put more than three things on today’s list? Me too. I’ll write down ten things and find (of course) that there aren’t enough hours to focus on them all. Solution? Estimate how long each item will take. Once you’re above a certain number of hours (remember you have to eat and rest), you know you’re overbooking yourself. Alternately, you can create time limits for each task and stick to them, no matter how much progress you make. Then you have a better idea of how much time you’ll need to finish the task tomorrow.
Set a timer: got your To Dos and time estimates? Set a timer for 25 minutes, or however long you like to work until a break. Once the timer goes off, check in with yourself. Are you working on one of your three priorities? Are you goofing off? That’s okay – maybe you need another 25 minutes to meander around the Internet. Setting a timer keeps you aware of how you’re spending your time, whether on the priorities you chose, or something different. This also works if you decide to take a nap, or write some emails, or anything.
Do 1 thing at a time: this is very challenging for me. My mind urges me to optimize! optimize! until I have ten tabs open and I’m trying to write an email while entering something in my calendar and reading an article. Try to complete one thing before going on to the next. I know you’ve heard this before – this advice is all over for a good reason.
What are some of your strategies?
