New Productivity Strategy - Reflection

Eric Kraus
personal
06 Dec, 2017

Introduction

This post is a follow up to the New Productivity Strategy post I wrote a few months back. I gave this new strategy a go for awhile and, here are my thoughts.

Problem and Solution

To catch you up…

I found myself in a new role with an overwhelming amount of work to tackle, mainly email. Rather than simply “focus” on the things to do, I was allowing myself to get sucked in to a routine of just accepting ‘interruption tasks’ from email, instant message, etc.

So many in fact, I could go days without getting any of my actual tasks done.

My new productivity framework looked something like this:

My 50+ item task list will get prioritized with today’s: “must do” top 5
Those 5 items are my “only do” list (for the moment)
New emails fall on the “never do” list, so I won’t check email until my “must do” items are done
After those first ones done, I’ll check email again for anything critical, triage and re-prioritize the task list
Take a break
Repeat

Reflection

Looking back - this new approach has been reinforcing several valuable lessons in prioritization:

We can only prioritize a few things at the same time - realistically, we can only work on ONE thing at a time. Proper goal setting for the day is critical.
It’s important to specifically call out things that are consistently distractions - email and IM are #1 for me. Email is actually de-prioritized on my list and I no longer log into IM tool or make myself Active by default.
Some things you just can’t put on the Never Do List. While I can’t remove email completely, I can designate specific times to do it…and do it fast. Internal email usually doesn’t warrant the same priority as something sent from a client.
Most of the time quantity is better than quality, when it comes to responses.
The biggest let down is not completing ANY task.
Delegation is important, but it has overhead on the follow through. If you are consistently delegating a task, it might be valuable to remove yourself from the middle.
I’ve played with the Pomodoro Technique over the years, but it has recently come in very handy to carve out time for forced breaks OR time to catch up on email.
Overall, any approach takes a discipline in saying “no”. Historically, that’s been a weakness of mine.
The biggest challenge in all of this is the feeling of dropping other tasks, letting others down or not appearing as useful as others. That’s simply a personal thing to work on.